Ischia

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Qualche settimana fa è morto ad Ischia il padre di Giacomo, Rocco. Vorremmo rendergli omaggio dedicando quest'articolo di blog, sotto forma di diario di viaggio, alla splendida isola d'Ischia. Ma, prima di riportare il diario di viaggio di Giacomo, ecco un ritratto delle "Isole partenopee" e, in particolare, dell'isola d'Ischia. 

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Nella baia o nel golfo di Napoli ci sono tre isole principali: Ischia, la più grande, Capri, e Procida. Eccole rappresentate, in alto, in una bellissima cartina del 1794 del celebre cartografo Giovanni Antonio Rizzi Zannoni. Insieme costituiscono l'arcipelago campano (o anche napoletano) e sono note come le isole del golfo (o della baia) di Napoli o, più raramente, con un nome molto più evocativo dei miti antichi che pervadono questa parte del mondo, le Isole partenopee. L'aggettivo partenopeo è sinonimo di napoletano e deriva dal nome di una delle sirene della mitologia greco-romana: Partenope. Ma chi era Partenope e cosa c'entra con Napoli? Ecco la spiegazione sintetica di Wikipedia, seguita da una spiegazione un po' più ampia tratto dal bel libro di Jordan Lancaster, In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Cultural History of Naples, seguita a sua volta da una straordinaria meditazione sulla figura di Partenope tratta dal bellissimo libro di Peter Robb, Street Fight in Naples: A Book of Art and Insurrection. 

Parthenope (Greek: Παρθενόπη) was one of the Sirens in Greek mythology. Her name means "Maiden-voiced". According to Greek legend, Parthenope was the daughter of the god Achelous and the Muse Terpsichore. She cast herself into the sea and drowned when her songs failed to entice Odysseus. Her body washed ashore at Naples, on the island of Megaride, where the the Castel dell'Ovo is now located. When people from the city of Cumae settled there, they named their city Parthenope in her honor. Roman myth tells a different version of the tale, in which a centaur called Vesuvius was enamored with Parthenope. In  jealousy, Zeus turned the centaur into a volcano and Parthenope into the city of Naples. Thwarted in his desire, Vesuvius's anger is manifested in the mountain's frequent eruptions. [Wikipedia]

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Mythical Naples

The numerous myths regarding the foundation of Naples confer prestige on this most ancient Italian metropolis. One of the most famous legends concerns Demeter, goddess of the harvest and protectress of the fertile land of the Campania region. Following a love affair with Zeus, the supreme divinity of the Greek pantheon, she gave birth to a daughter. Persephone was a beautiful maiden whose childhood was spent playing in the abundant fields of Campania with the siren sisters for company. However, one day, when the siren sisters were playing elsewhere, nubile Persephone was gathering flowers alone. Pluto, king of the underworld, had fallen in love with her some time previously and he seized this opportunity to carry his beloved away to Hades. Persephone's distraught mother looked everywhere for her beautiful young daughter, even transforming the siren sisters into birds so that they might fly over land and water in their search. To help the sirens find their way, Demeter created light sources on the mountains and in the sea, which survive today as the volcanoes of Southern Italy: Etna, Stromboli, Ischia, the Phlegrean Fields. The largest volcano, Vesuvius, was created to illuminate Campania. Finally, the search ended when Demeter learned that Pluto had married her daughter and Persephone was now the queen of Hades. Faced with this situation, the goddess negotiated an agreement with Pluto that Persephone would spend half the year with each of them: Her arrival at her mother's home in Campania always heralded the advent of spring. 

Persephone's childhood friends, the siren sisters, were the daughters of Melpomene, the muse of tragedy. They are often depicted as beautiful creatures, half-woman and half-bird. A fresco by Annibale Caracci in Rome's Palazzo Farnese depicts the sirens in this manner as does a statue in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. However, since the Middle Ages, the sirens have been portrayed as mermaids, half-woman and half-fish, representing a potential hazard to fishermen and sailors. The Ancients had a reverential fear of the sirens, who personified the perils of the sea and its storms. Because the sirens had been cursed by Demeter for their failure to save her daughter, their beautiful music always portended disaster. Their songs promised to reveal great secrets about life and the world, yet in truth they were only a ruse to lure hapless sailors to their island off the Amalfi Coast, to be seduced and devoured. The best known of the siren sisters was Parthenope, who has come to symbolise the legendary combination of beauty and danger, attraction and repulsion, which defines the essence of Naples. The Italians still refer to Naples as the city of Parthenope, and the adjectives 'neapolitan' and 'parthenopean' can be used interchangeably. 

In Book XII of Homer's Odyssey, the witch Circe warned Ulysses about the sirens' music and offered him some advice to resist their allure. In order to escape seduction, he instructed his sailors to block their ears with wax, so as not to be enchanted by the sirens' songs. Ulysses then had his men lash him to the ship's mast, so that he might hear the music whilst physically restrained from the temptation to succumb to Parthenope and her sisters. As the rosyfingered dawn brought first light, Ulysses and his men prepared to set sail. The crew turned the sea white with the foam generated by their hearty rowing, as Ulysses listened in rapture to the sirens' voices. An auspicious wind sent by Circe carried Ulysses and his men towards the island of the sirens and a sudden calming of the sea heightened the drama of imminent danger: 

When we were as far distant as a man can make himself heard when he shouts, driving swiftly on our way, the Sirens failed not to note the swift ship as it drew near, and they raised their clear-toned song: 'Come hither, as thou fairest, renowned Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans; stay thy ship that thou mayest listen ... For never yet has any man rowed past this isle in his black ship until he has heard the sweet voice from our lips. Nay, he has joy of it, and goes his way a wiser man. For we know all the toils that in wide Troy the Argives and Trojans endured through the will of the gods, and we know all things that come to pass upon the fruitful earth.

Ulysses withstood their seductive advances, his ship sailed on and the spell was broken. Parthenope was so devastated that she threw herself into the sea and drowned. Her lifeless body washed up on the rocks of the island of Megaride, on the Bay of Naples, where the earliest Greek colonists discovered her corpse and arranged for a reverent burial on Pizzofalcone hill.

In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Cultural History of Naples - Jordan Lancaster (I.B.Tauris; 2005)

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Siren songs 

Parthenope washed up on the shore of the bay and died there. This was how Naples began. Parthenope was one of the Sirens who tried to lure Odysseus on to their rocks as he sailed toward home. The Sirens sang and promised the future and Odysseus struggled to respond to their call, but forewarned by Circe he was tied to the mast and his men had their ears blocked with bees' wax and rowed on. 

A sirena is a mermaid, as in the little image of the mermaid on the yellow and red tin of Sirena tuna sold in Australia. It is probably a coincidence that red and yellow are the city colours of Naples, the colours that make its festive bunting flame against the blue of the sea and the sky on a clear day. Sirena classico tuna in oil Italian style. On the red disc under the Sirena and above the descriptive slogan is a fin de siècle mermaid, holding her hands behind her head. The golden tresses hanging down front and back of each raised arm, cascading over the otherwise bare breasts, are towy and Teutonic, with more than a touch of Rheinmëdchen, whereas the facial features are distinctly Mediterranean and the hand that applied the lippy so heavily was clearly Neapolitan. 

Her bluish silver tail, with twin flared flukes like a diving whale's, is folded back under her. Her raised left elbow reaches just outside the red disc at the top. The curved part of her lower body, which would be her shin if she were merely human, touches the lower inside of the disc directly opposite at seven o'clock. Her silvery blue scales begin, faintly, almost imperceptibly, with superb verisimilitude, on the lower side of her visible buttock, lightly caressed by the splendid forked tail. If she weren't fishtailed, the Sirena® would be kneeling. As it is, supported by unseen water, she seems to have picked up a few lessons in posture from her fellow marine anomaly the tiny seahorse. Columbus was disgusted when he crossed the Atlantic and in January 1493 saw three mermaids who were Creatures ... not so faire as they are painted and that their faces were quite ugly, somewhat resembling Men. Columbus seems to have been describing dugongs or manatees and thus rather understating his disappointment. So, in a wilted and languorous posture, breasts no longer pertly uplifted, fingers no longer locked behind the golden tresses of her head, I supposed Parthenope had been when she washed up at Santa Lucia. Histories of Naples always began with Parthenope and thus I imagined her. 

Parthenope got no personal mention in the Odyssey, where in any case the Sirens were only two. When not trying to attract the attention of a passing boat, they lounged in their meadow on an island, among the mouldering bones of the seamen they had lured to their death. Homer didn't say what they looked like. Their appeal was not their bodies and their only mentioned attraction the irresistible call of their high, thrilling song, which was not just seductive music but a promise of knowing the past, the future, the elsewhere. Homer didn't describe them, leaving us to infer that they were purely human. 

It was a shock to find the Sirens shown on ancient vases as hideous and slightly absurd vulturelike birds, short and flightless, clumsy half-plucked chooks suspended in the air in most surviving images – the plucked look belonging to the human upper body, the feathers and talons showing from the thighs – who might have been sketched by Edward Lear. You could imagine how their unearthly music might invite thoughts of sea birds wheeling and calling above the surf and the rocks with the promise of something beyond the shore. But a seagull is beautiful and as shown on pots the Sirens were hideous fat carrion birds with stumpy wings, hardly relieved by their young girls' faces. 

They had been friends of Persephone and something bad happened when they were together and she was raped and taken to the underworld by Pluto, either in Sicily or in Campania, places where a volcanically intense other life lurked under the fertile surface of the ground. Something bad happened when they tried to save their friend, or maybe because they failed to save her. Or maybe it was because they intended to remain virgins. The something bad was the carrion bird body and the great predators' talons. They might have been plucked by the muses after losing a singing contest. Sometimes they had beards as well. Physically they embodied about as many rebarbative features as a single allegorical female body could take, and it was a way of offsetting the lure of knowledge, the disembodied ecstasy of their sensuous harmonies. 

As lookers and as troublemakers the Sirens were hardly different in their early days from the monstrous Harpies, to whom they seemed a kind of cousin. Harpies too were killer women with wings and talons, flying embodiments of the vagina dentata to the hallucinating stressed-out sailor, but they lacked the lure of song. Harpies – the snatchers – were attack birds, or attack women, and they came on like sudden fatal storms out of a clear day at sea. They too began as only two and became more numerous but lacking music and insight, they never won acceptance the way the Sirens did in the end. Music had a way of overcoming obstacles. 

When he encountered the Sirens, warned in advance by Circe, Odysseus and his crew were making their way – in real world geography – south from the bay of Naples, sailing down along the western coast of southern Italy and heading for the treacherous water between Sicily and the mainland – Scylla and Charybdis – on the way home to Ithaca. The Sirens' island was Capri, their home the whole Sorrento peninsula, their meadow one of the pockets of plateau on Capri high above the sea. The bird women took off from their eyrie and wheeled over passing boats. The island offered powerful settings for their suicide when they failed to lure Odysseus to his destruction. One cliff rose sheer hundreds of meters out of the water. 

Homer was silent on the Sirens' physiology and on their deaths, interested only in how Odysseus could hear their amazing music and live. He knew when not to elaborate. They threw themselves into the sea and Parthenope's body was carried ashore at the place where Naples now is, more precisely on that tiny island a few meters offshore the Greeks called Megaris, later covered by the Castel dell'Ovo. What did she look like? Were the Greek settlers who found her immediately aware she was a Siren? Did they know what they were dealing with? She would have looked like the very old man with enormous wings whom Gabriel Garda Marquez once described as brought down by torrential rains in another and later remote settlement of Mediterranean origin, on the Caribbean coast of South America. Or a large fruit bat. Bald and toothless, he was an angel rather than a siren, being male and arriving into a postclassical and Christian community, a tattooed seaman who spoke Norwegian. The locals put him in the hen coop with the other chooks and fed him on kitchen scraps, making money out of him while the church thought out its position on angels in the community. 

Parthenope too, like the old man, was perhaps still alive and lying face down in the mud, impeded by his enormous wings ... huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked ... entangled in the mud ... strewn with parasites and ... mistreated by terrestrial winds. Something already quite dead washed up on a beach, looking like a drowned bird with a human face, bloated and disintegrating and previously gnawed at by sea creatures in the water, was less likely to elicit intense feelings of sympathy and identification, even devotion, than a creature still palpitating with a life of its own, however faintly, a young female who might have chosen that particular place to come ashore. Why else would settlers have given the new place her name, and seen themselves in her? 

A dead Parthenope would have been like the creature that appalled Fellini's corrupted white-suited Marcello on the beach at the end of La Dolce Vita. Day had just broken, he'd been up all night again, and the sea was too calm, an enormous yellowish puddle. Fishermen had just dragged ashore something between a rat and a pregnant woman, nearly two meters long and bearing monstrous flippers. A few crabs are crawling up its big belly, white and obscene . . . the corpse still has something alive about it ... a human eye with an eyelid and lashes and a hazelnut coloured pupil ... and the eye seems to be staring at him. Fellini's fishermen, like the Caribbean people in Garcia Marquez, flared up in brief excitement at the commercial possibilities of their catch. One of them had seen people paying to see one of these in a sideshow at Gaeta. Only, like the angel on the other side of the Atlantic, the sideshow monster had been alive. Now, throw it back ... it's already dead. 

The protoNeapolitans would have done the same with an already dead Parthenope. A live Parthenope, however bedraggled, however grotesque as she neared her end, would have seemed, like the old man with enormous wings, familiar. In the Caribbean, the angel, after seeming dead of age and exhaustion, unexpectedly struggled back into the air and the housewife into whose yard he had fallen saw him disappear, no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea. Parthenope, too, stayed around long enough for the locals to feel she was one of themselves, before they buried her on the high point where they'd built their central citadel, protected on nearly every side by sheer cliffs, the steep promontory now called Pizzofalcone where the city began, which dropped away to the sea and the tiny island where Parthenope came ashore. 

Parthenope was eros and death. Dying at the moment of arrival, she reached orgasm and expiration at once. As a founding figure, she embodied the peculiarly Neapolitan sense of happiness glimpsed and never quite reached, of voluptuousness snatched away just as it was being realized. Love, death and the dangerous powers of music and knowledge. Mediterranean dreams frustrated the adolescent Humbert Humbert, whose murderous involutions would deprive Lolita of her childhood and her life. The defining moment of the infant Humbert with his Annabel on the Mediterranean coast of France had nothing to do with the Siren as other than human but everything to do with the maddening ecstasy of non-realization on the edge of the Mediterranean, when (this was our very last chance, and nothing really mattered) 

we ... found a desolate stretch of sand and there, in the violet shadow of some red rocks forming a kind of cave, had a brief session of avid caresses, with somebody's pair of lost sunglasses for only witness. I was on my knees, and on the point of possessing my darling, when two bearded bathers, the old man of the sea and his brother, came out of the sea with exclamations of ribald encouragement, and four months later she died of typhus in Corfu. 

The old man of the sea was at once a fin de siècle athlete in long striped woollen drawers and Nereus, forerunner of Poseidon the sea god and father of the Nereids, the sea nymphs. Some ancients said the Sirens themselves were nymphs. 

Somewhere in her long afterlife as the presiding spirit of the city that was called after her, Parthenope changed from being a drowned half-bird to a beautiful longhaired fishtailed woman. She survived the coming of Christianity and the long centuries before ancient learning revived. Five centuries after the founding of her city, a kneeling terracotta figure from Athens showed a siren as all woman, apart from a large and shapely pair of angel's wings and a fishtail below her ankles. Fish sirens were postdassical, Hellenistic at best, but largely medieval. Parthenope's transformation in the middle ages might have been accelerated by medieval masons' difficulties with feathers. Stone needed to be finely carved to show skin covered with feathers. The sleek tail, powerful, tapering, flexed and flaring into a bow at the end, was powerfully suggestive and less technically challenging than a pair of wings. 

Siren ambiguity went back to origins and was also linguistic. In Greek, wings and flippers shared the same word, and in Latin and then in Italian, feathers and fins were almost identical, penne e pinne. Sea people of both sexes haunted the Mediterranean from the very earliest time, and the Sirens were assimilated to them, as their harmonies and the knowledge they promised became more and more intimately a part of the sensual and sexual nature of the fish women themselves. By the time she was formalized as an emblem of Naples in the early eighteenth century, Parthenope had developed a double fishtail and wore a crown suitable to a kingdom. She held her motto on a little placard. It was almost an invitation, Non sempre nuoce, or Not always harmful, and renewed her exquisite ambiguity for the age of enlightenment. 

Like her city she was never quite tamed. A fish-devouring silver-tailed adolescent girl, a fresh, slender, white-toothed, carnal sixteen-year-old, otherworldly and immortal, encountered Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa's handsome young classicist on the eastern coast of Sicily one summer in the last years of the nineteenth century. For her it was one of the countless sexual relations of her millennial adolescence with sailors and fishermen, Greeks, Sicilians, Arabs, Capresi and a few shipwreck survivors. For the young man in his early twenties it changed everything. Three weeks on a deserted beach were such an overwhelming erotic experience that he was unable to contemplate sex with mere women without disgust for the rest of his life. 

She only ate live food. I often saw her coming up out of the sea, her delicate torso shining in the sun while she tore into a silvery still quivering fish with her teeth, a trickle of blood running down her chin . . . she was an animal and immortal at the same time ... in sex she showed a joyousness and delicacy quite contrary to the grim animal tale and she spoke with a powerful immediacy I've found since only in a few great poets. 

The one sensual satisfaction which remained to him in his decades of solitary academic distinction was devouring the innards of fresh sea urchins. They smelt like her and their flesh recalled her sexual organs. The Siren whom the elderly professor had known as a young man was Parthenope's sister Ligeia. 

Nothing material remained – no shrine, no statue, no inscription – to suggest quite what the early Parthenopeans felt about their founding Siren. Did anyone try to make a fast buck out of the creature washed up on the beach? Feelings of pity, wonder, lust, revulsion and the cash flow instinct were not likely to be much different three thousand years ago. When the geographer Strabo visited Naples at the time of Christ he found an elaborate cult around Parthenope's memory with games and guided visits to her tomb, the official rites of a city that was already a thousand years old, and a sanctuary to the Sirens on the tip of the Sorrento peninsula opposite the island where they had leapt to their death. 

Everyone born into settler societies felt the same anxiety to legitimize the usurpation- of someone else's ground, to give a new place dignity, lineage, meaning. At first everyone making a hardscrabble new life on the other side of the world thought only of Home, but in social adolescence a place required an identity of its own. The dying Siren they identified as Parthenope, Virgin's Eye herself, gave the lonely colonists' western frontier settlement a link to the figures and the stories of the life they'd left. Parthenope, dying in Naples, made them feel, on the newfound coast, beautiful but strange and scary, that it was a small world after all. Even in the far West they were still on the map of the imaginable. 

In the end Parthenope was no more than picturesque local folklore and glamorous nomenclature for the classically educated tourist. The soldiers of the Wehrmacht arrived in Naples as friends from the Third Reich and allies in the great fraternal enterprise of totalitarian empire in Europe and the world. They stayed as occupiers to reduce the city on Hitler's directive to a heap of mud and ashes before the British and the Americans arrived. Even before they tried to destroy Naples, the Germans had felt let down by the city and finding [Naples] had become so much uglier than it was in the descriptions of Mozart ... and Goethe, they changed its name to Althénopis, which would mean Old Woman's Eye. 

Parthenope's definitive funeral came after the Neapolitans had driven out the Germans. When the British and the Americans arrived to occupy Naples in their place, Mark Clark, the leader of a very imperfectly conceived and executed invasion, expressed a preference for fish. The starving Neapolitans, who were forbidden to fish in the bay among the Allied ships and the floating mines, may or may not have served him the last and most precious remaining inhabitant of the aquarium in their Zoological Station, whose collection of marine animals had been a wonder of biology. The main dish was a baby manatee, boiled and served with a garlic sauce according to Norman Lewis, who arrived as an intelligence officer with the British army some months later, and reported what all Neapolitans believe. Curzio Malaparte in 1949 added that the Siren was served cold with a mayonnaise. A faint cry if horror escaped Mrs Flat's lips and General Cork went pale. 

A little girl, or something very like a little girl, lay on her back in the middle of the tray, on a bed of green lettuce leaves ... her eyes were open, lips half parted ... she was naked, but her skin, dark and shiny and the same purple colour as Mrs Flat's dress, moulded just like a tight dress the still immature yet already harmonious outline of her body, the soft curve of her waist, the slight bulge of her belly, the tiny virginal breasts, the broad shoulders. She may have been only eight or ten years old, but she was precocious and already womanly enough to look fifteen at first sight. Torn here and there, or mushed up in the cooking, the skin afforded glimpses through the splits and folds of tender silvery golden flesh ... Her face, which the heat of the boiling water had caused to burst from its skin like an overripe fruit, was like a gleaming old porcelain mask, prominent lips, high narrow brow, round green eyes. Her arms were short, a kind of fin ending in a point like fingerless hands ... The long slender waist ended just as Ovid described it, "in piscem", in a fishtail ... she gazed up at the Triumph of Venus painted on the ceiling, at the turquoise sea, the silver fishes, the green monsters of the deep, the white clouds floating across the horizon and smiled ecstatically. That was her sea, her lost home, the land of her dreams, the happy kingdom of the Sirens. 

It was the first time I had seen a little girl boiled, and I remained silent, gripped by a holy fear. Everyone around the table was pale with horror. 

Malaparte went through the American occupation of Naples in a sweat of embarrassment and humiliation and fevered imagining and was not reliable. He was even wrong about Ovid, for whom the Sirens still weare Both feete and feathers like to Birdes and beare The upper parts of Maidens still. Like all the episodes involving Parthenope and her sisters, her funeral at the banquet for Mark Clark hovered between the imagined and the merely real. Underneath Malaparte's interminable embellishments and Lewis's dry annotation of the strange things people liked to eat in Naples was a last flash of the unnamed Parthenope in Neapolitan talk. A small splash, a flick of her silver tail and she disappeared forever from the people's mind as the Americans patrolled the rubble of her city pumping out clouds of DDT.

Street Fight in Naples: A Book of Art and Insurrection - Peter Robb (Allan&Unwin; 2010)

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Per chiudere questa lunga divagazione su Partenope, ecco due filmati che rappresentano la scena dell'Odissea in cui Ulisse ascolta il canto delle Sirene: il primo è tratto dal film Ulisse, di Mario Camerini, girato nel 1954, nel quale Kirk Douglas interpreta Ulisse; il secondo è tratto dalla serie televisiva del 1968 della Rai, Odissea, in cui Ulisse è interpretato da Bekim Fehmiu.

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Tornando alle Isole del Golfo di Napoli, ecco come ce le descrive la Guida Vacanze: Golfo di Napoli e Costiera amalfitana, del Touring Club Italiano.

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Capri, Ischia, Procida: lusso, benessere, e semplicità in un unico grande mare. 

È un filo magico quello che unisce le tre perle del golfo di Napoli. Sospese tra l'azzurro del mare e del cielo sembra che abbiano stretto un patto eterno col sole mediterraneo, che accarezza e infonde linfa vitale al verde della macchia che ricopre le rocce, talvolta aspre, talvolta dolci, di questi scogli eletti dagli dei come uno spicchio di paradiso. Vicine alla grande Napoli sembrano guardare con distacco le frenetiche vicende della metropoli lasciandosi plasmare dalle primordiali forze del mare e del vento. Brillano di luce propria nel golfo attirando su di loro le attenzioni di mezzo mondo. Abitano lo stesso mare ma hanno pochi aspetti comuni: abitudini, carattere, e storie di ognuna hanno una definita identità, differenziandosi tra loro. 

L'impatto con l'aria di Capri suscita emozione: la piazzetta, i vicoli bianchi, l'eleganza di vetrine d'autore e panorami mozzafiato hanno fatto di questo luogo una meta molto ambita; il turismo "high class", un po' snob e ingioiellato, che affolla la piazzetta trasformandola nel salotto dell' effimero, è un fenomeno più recente di quel turismo intellettuale ed artistico che ha contribuito a creare l'immagine esclusiva di questo luogo. 

Bianca e dagli aspri profili, Capri si contrappone alle forme smussate del tufo di Ischia, sorella maggiore dell'altra isola flegrea Procida. La natura vulcanica di Ischia è evidente e, a parte disastrosi terremoti, è nella diretta connessione col sottosuolo il tesoro dell'isola: Ie acque calde che sgorgano dalle sorgenti termali sono I'esclusivo patrimonio di questa terra che dal XVII secolo è meta di turisti in cerca di cure e benessere per il proprio corpo. Le potenzialità turistiche di Ischia si evidenziano nei quasi trecento alberghi che in alta stagione si riempiono regolarmente. I turisti che non amana Ie mondanità non hanno di che preoccuparsi: Capri e Ischia sono due capitali internazionali del turismo ma offrono angoli di grande suggestione anche per gli amanti della natura e dei grandi spazi. 

E Procida, la piccola Procida, in che rapporto si pone con Ie due modelle piu famose? Non se ne cura più di tanto orgogliosa della sua forte personalità; vive con la semplice filosofia dei suoi pescatori e ignora il turismo come fenomeno industriale. È bella, forse la più autentica e Ie sta bene iI suo look semplice e colorato, ricco di tradizioni legate alia sua piccola terra e al suo grande mare.

Guida Vacanze: Golfo di Napoli e Costiera Amalfitana (Touring Club Italiano; 1997)

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E ora puntiamo i reflettori sull'Isola d'Ischia. Ischia copre una superfice di circa 46kmq; ha una linea costiera di circa 34km; l'isola è dominata dalla mole del monte Epomeo, alto 788m, che sorge al centro dell'isola, e dista circa 33km (in linea d'aria) da Napoli: 50 minuti in aliscafo; 90 minuti in traghetto. La popolazione residente è di circa 62,000 abitanti e l'isola è divisa in sei comuni: Ischia, Casamicciola Terme, Lacco Ameno, Forio, Serrara Fontana e Barano d'Ischia. Ischia è di origine vulcanica ed è famosa in Italia e in Europa per le sue acque termali. Ecco un paio di brevi descrizioni dei sei comuni: il primo tratto dal sito IschiaOnline; il secondo dalla rivista Condé Nast Traveller dell'Aprile, 2001. 

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Ischia si articola in sei comuni: Ischia ,Casamicciola Terme , Lacco Ameno , Forio , Serrara Fontana e Barano , con una popolazione totale di circa 50.000 abitanti.Ischia è il centro più importante e si divide nella zona del Porto, che oggi rappresenta la parte più commerciale dell'isola e nella zona di Ponte dove domina il Castello Aragonese e il borgo antico e caratteristico dei pescatori. Il suggestivo Porto d'Ischia è in realtà il cratere di un vulcano spento e sprofondato che diede origine ad un lago. Rimase tale fino al 1854 quando Ferdinando II di Borbone fece aprire un varco inaugurando il porto. La zona di Ischia è stata testimone dell'ultimo evento vulcanico verificatosi sull'isola: nel 1301 un cratere si aprì nella zona di Fiaiano e un fiume di lava discese fino al mare ricoprendo case e campi, creando l'attuale punta Molino. Fu un fenomeno tanto lungo e intenso che gli abitanti evacuarono l'isola per due anni. In seguito nel 1853 in quest'area i Borboni realizzarono un'opera di rimboschimento di pini, e ancora oggi possiamo ammirare le folte pinete.

Il comune di Forio situato sul versante di ponente ospita nel suo territorio molte frazioni e zone di interesse naturalistico molto suggestive. Particolari nel suo territorio sono le zone di produzione vinicola, quasi il 60% della produzione isolana proviene da questa zona. Caratteristica è la presenza dei terrazzamenti per la coltura della vite sulle alture e i tipici muri a secco, "le parracine", di pietra di tufo verde presente in questo versante dell'isola. Vicino a Forio si trovano due bellissime spiagge, Citara e Cava dell'isola, e inoltre importanti sorgenti termali a Citara e nella baia di Sorgeto, dove è possibile bagnarsi nelle acque calde in ogni periodo dell'anno.

Casamicciola Terme è stata famosa e rinomata anche in passato per le terme della zona che godono di acque particolarmente pure e benefiche. Nell'ottocento le terme casamicciolesi erano rinomate e molti personaggi illustri soggiornavano per godere delle cure degli stabilimenti. Questo comune è noto anche per le calamità che l'hanno colpito: nel 1883 un terremoto disastroso con epicentro a Casamicciola rase completamente al suolo l'intera cittadina e su tutta l'isola i danni furono ingenti, morirono circa un terzo degli isolani. Ancora oggi Casamicciola è il centro dell'isola a più alto rischio sismico, in quanto la sua posizione la vede collocata al di sopra di una profonda faglia sotterranea. Alle spalle del centro si trova una zona verde di pinete e boschi di castagni dove partono sentieri di risalita al monte Epomeo. 

Anche nel comune di Lacco Ameno si trovano stabilimenti termali importanti (le terme Rizzoli), ma il passato di questo luogo va molto indietro nel tempo. Sono stati ritrovati in questa zona resti di un insediamento greco che testimoniano la presenza della civiltà greca sull'isola risalente al 757 a.C. Gli scavi realizzati negli anni '60 dal Prof. Buchner, hanno portato alla luce resti di una necropoli e molti reperti (la Coppa di Nestore) che testimoniano la presenza degli Eubei, antico popolo greco colonizzatore dell'occidente. Inoltre un piccolo museo permette di visitare i sotterranei della chiesa di Santa Restituta che nascondono le fondamenta di un'antica cattedrale di epoca paleocristiana e le catacombe.

I due comuni di Serrara Fontana e Barano si trovano in alto sul livello del mare e presentano un tipico territorio montano dove si articolano diversi sentieri di risalita alla vetta del Monte Epomeo. Fanno parte di questi comuni anche due zone costiere: il paesino di Sant'Angelo, nella cui zona è possibile ammirare le sempre attive fumarole; la spiaggia dei Maronti, la più estesa dell'isola con i canaloni di Cava Scura e dell'Olmitello.

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Cinquantaseimila abitanti divisi in sei comuni, a loro volta frazionati in località minori. Ecco un giro che parte dal "capoluogo".

Ischia [1]. Con i suoi 17.246 residenti è il centro più grande e importante dell'isola: si compone di una parte antica, Ischia Ponte, e di una moderna, Ischia Porto, sviluppatasi a partire dal '700. Il primo insediamento crebbe sullo scoglio del cosiddetto Castello Aragonese e, dal '200 in poi, si estese formando il borgo di Ischia Ponte, dedito alla pesca e alla lavorazione della seta. Il Porto risale al 1854 quando Ferdinando Il di Borbone fece collegare il lago costiero, formatosi in un cratere vulcanico, al mare. Caratteristica la Riva Destra del Porto con i suoi ristoranti e gli "american bar" animati sino a tarda notte. Nel vecchio borgo di Ponte si trovano invece botteghe, gallerie d'arte e il Museo del mare all'interno del Palazzo dell'Orologio. 

Barano [2]. È il secondo Comune dell'isola per estensione e mantiene ancora una fisionomia agricola. Ha uno sviluppo prevalentemente collinare che digrada verso la spiaggia dei Maronti. A Buonopane è da visitare la sorgente di Nitrodi, conosciuta già nel I secolo a. C.; in località Testaccio, tra i vigneti, si conservano i resti del piccolo monastero dedicato a San Costanzo. 

Serrara Fontana [3]. Clima d'alta collina se si punta alla vetta del monte Epomeo, spettacolare punto d'arrivo di una piacevole escursione. Calanchi scoscesi, orti e vigneti, boschi e radure sono gli aspetti tipici del comune meno popolato. È diviso nelle due frazioni di Serrara e Fantana, e punteggiato da toponimi come Kalimera e Noia, villaggi avvolti nel mistero, di origine greca. Digrada sino al mare con l'istmo di Sant'Angelo, dove c'è Il porticciolo. 

Forio [4]. Conserva una profonda identità socio-culturale, una peculiarità monumentale e architettonica, segnata dai "torrioni", costruiti per avvistare gli sbarchi dei pirati berberi che infestavano il Tirreno nel XVI secolo. È stata il buen retiro di artisti e intellettuali provenienti da ogni parte del mondo nel dopoguerra, dal regista Luchino Visconti agli scrittori Alberto Moravia e Truman Capote: un salotto multilingue che aveva il suo "centro" tra i tavoli del mitico Bar Internazionale di Maria. Panza è la frazione più popolosa, e chiude a sudovest un territorio che scivola dalle falde del monte Epomeo alle sabbie di Citara. Da non perdere, al tramonto, la chiesa della Madonna del Soccorso su una roccia a picco sul mare, e i giardini (con oltre 200 varietà di piante tropicali e mediterranee) di Villa "La Mortella" che appartenne al compositore inglese William Walton (1902-1983). 

Lacco Ameno [5]. Una sottile striscia costiera, dalla quale spunta il caratteristico scoglio tufaceo del Fungo, costituisce lo scalo ideale per la piccola nautica, le gite turistiche via mare e i pescatori: Lacco Ameno è il Comune più piccolo dell'isola, trasformato negli anni Cinquanta nella perla delle vacanze d'élite. Qui approdarono nell'VIII secolo a. C. i fondatori di Pithecusae di cui restano molte testimonianze nei siti archeologici di Santa Restituta e Villa Arbusto che custodisce anche la celebre "Coppa di Nestore". 

Casamicciola Terme [6]. Per le sorgenti termali, l'amenità e la mitezza del clima, fu tra il '700 
e l'800 una delle mete predilette dell'aristocrazia di tutta Europa. l'antico borgo, distrutto da un terremoto nel 1883, fu ricostruito verso il mare. Oggi offre un attrezzato approdo nautico che ospita decine di yacht, off-shore e velieri, ormai alternativo, per importanza, a quello di Ischia.

Condé Nast Traveller: Napoli, Pompei, Ercolano, Ischia e Procida (Aprile 2001).

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Diamo "un'occhiata" ad Ischia attraverso una serie di filmati: il primo breve filmato è tratto da una serie dal titolo Visions of Italy dove si riprende l'isola dall'alto - attenzione, l'isolotto che si vede all'inizio del filmato è il Castello d'Ischia o il Castello Aragonese, che fa parte dell'isola d'Ischia, non è tutta l'isola d'Ischia!; nel secondo filmato, Licia colò, ex-conduttrice del programma di viaggi della Rai 3, Alle falde del Kilimangiaro, ci porta all scoperta dell'isola; vi proponiamo inoltre due documentari, di tipo turistico ma ben fatti (a parte la musica), dal titolo di L'isola d'Ischia e il suo Castello, nella versione italiana ed inglese, e Ischia, l'isola del benessere. E, per finire, un bellissimo filmato d'Ischia di Giuseppe Mattera: Island of Ischia - Timelapse. Eccoli: 

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Diario di viaggio

Malgrado sia tornato a Ischia di fretta e furia, qualche settimana fa, per un motivo tristissimo, non sono potuto non rimanere abbagliato dalla bellezza dell'isola da cui mancavo da diversi anni. La nostra casa si trova nel comune di Forio, nella parte occidentale dell'isola. Ecco alcune foto della casa e del panorama di cui godiamo e capirete perché non c'è da meravigliarsi se si è assolutamente ammaliati da quest'isola:

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Ischia, nei mesi estivi – per fortuna perché il turismo, anche se in calo a causa della crisi che imperversa in Italia da qualche anno, è l'unica grande risorsa economica dell'isola – è presa d'assalto da decine di migliaia di turisti italiani ed europei, soprattutto tedeschi e russi, attratti dal mare, dal paesaggio, dalle spiagge, e dalle acque termali. Nonostante ciò, l'isola non ha perso la sua vocazione contadina anche se ormai sono in pochissimi a fare il contadino, o l'agricoltore, di mestiere. E nonostante l'abusivismo edilizio del dopoguerra, l'isola conserva la sua folta vegetazione che le ha conferito il soprannome di "isola verde". Infatti bastano pochi minuti per uscire dai vari centri abitati dell'isola, tipo il centro di Ischia Porto, quello di Forio, quello di Lacco Ameno, di Casamicciola, ecc, dove, in piena estate, regnano il traffico, la folla, e il rumore dei motorini, per ritrovarsi nella campagna verdeggiante, tra i vigneti e gli orti, i campi di papaveri, gli alberi di frutta, i boschi di pino, quercia, e castagno, dove regna il silenzio – rotto, per fortuna solo occasionalmente, dal rumore di un'Ape, motorino, o clacson – e il cinguettio degli uccelli, e dove di notte svolazzano le lucciole. Quasi tutti gli abitanti coltivano l'orto, di cui vanno fieri, e allevano galline e conigli. Ecco in basso alcune foto dell'orto di mio padre:     

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A proposito della vocazione contadina di Ischia, ecco un bell'articolo del 2007 apparso nel quotidiano La Stampa, in cui Antonella Carriero, proprietaria del rinomato L'albergo della Regina Isabella di Lacco Ameno, parla della "sua" Ischia: 

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"Il glamour frugale della mia Ischia"  

E’ un’isola, eppure l’ischitano medio non sa nuotare e soffre di mal di mare. E’ un’isola ma l’ischitano medio non è pescatore, è contadino. E’ un’isola, eppure il piatto tipico non è pesce, ma coniglio. Benvenuti a Ischia, quella che fuoriesce dalle cartoline, che affascina inglesi e tedeschi, quella che fa escursioni sul vulcano, quella che mangi pomodori e olio, quella della semplicità fatalista, dei ricchi e dei poveri tutti uguali su un lembo di spiaggia, quella che accoglie Hollywood da sempre ma quasi non ci fa caso.

Una Ischia dell’anima raccontata da Antonella Carriero, proprietaria con la sua famiglia dell’hotel Della Regina Isabella a Lacco Ameno, costruito nel 1956 per volere di Angelo Rizzoli, già sede di pescatori, ceduto a un patto: che si fosse costruito di lì a poco un ospedale. Rizzoli mantenne la promessa e ancora oggi quel presidio medico è l’unico di un’isola che conta sei comuni, appena più piccola dell’Elba. 

«Vengo qui a villeggiare da quando avevo tre anni e oggi, a cinquanta, continuo a scoprire cose che non avevo mai visto prima». Si sorprende di se stessa, Antonella, e ti racconta come in una favola di un’isola che ha passato varie stagioni, l’aggressione degli anni Quaranta e Cinquanta, il sospetto camorra sulla speculazione edilizia, un turismo a volte scellerato. «Gli ischitani si sono adeguati a modo loro. Preservando una parte alta, verde, non conforme alle richieste del turismo globalizzato che nasconde percorsi alternativi non violentati. E qui esce fuori l’animo contadino attaccato alla terra, all’essenziale, alle cose concrete. Un piccolo orto, pochi pomodori, un limone, un pergolato dove stare. Loro la difendono, quest’anima, che li riconduce alla semplicità delle origini». Una semplicità che paga. Anche quando a praticarla sono imprenditori illuminati. Come Franco Iacono, proprietario dell’azienda vinicola Pietratorcia D’Ambra. Lui, europarlamentare, accoglie i degustatori in una cantina rimasta la stessa da secoli. Un gran tavolo di legno dove sedere tutti insieme, dove assaggiare il vino sempre accompagnato da un piatto di patate e cipolle. Non offre solo da bere, ti garantisce un’esperienza. O come Riccardo D’Ambra (qui tutti si chiamano quasi allo stesso modo), ristoratore. Per raggiungerlo sopra la montagna devi attrezzarti a trekking. Ma la fatica è ampiamente ripagata. Al Focolare lavorano lui, moglie e sette figli, le erbe che usa sono selvatiche, prese dal bosco che costeggia uno dei crateri del monte Epomeo. Mondi diversi che si attraggono irresistibilmente, ecco Susanna Walton che sposò il compositore inglese William, si innamorarono dell’isola e qui si stabilirono. Hanno costruito il giardino della Mortella e Susanna, rimasta vedova, ha messo su una fondazione a nome del marito, patrocinata dal Principe Carlo d’Inghilterra, che sovvenziona giovani musicisti. Ogni settimana si tengono concerti nel teatro immerso nel verde, non è raro trovarvi anche il principe del Galles in visita privata.

Charme dietro l’orto

Ma Ischia è anche Hollywood, glamour a dieci metri dall’orto. Racconta sempre Antonella Carriero che nel suo albergo era ambientato il delizioso film «Che cosa è successo tra mio padre e tua madre?» di Billy Wilder con un irresistibile Jack Lemmon e Juliet Mills del 1972. Oppure «Appuntamento a Ischia» con Mina, Franco Franchi e Ciccio Ingrassia, tutta la serie «estiva» con Cifariello protagonista e «Il corsaro dell’isola verde» con Burt Lancaster. «Protetti da un clima da set, venivano a villeggiare a Ischia, Liz Taylor e Richard Burton. «La loro storia nacque qui e si capì subito che sarebbe stata turbolenta. Una notte ci fu una lite furibonda, loro occupavano una suite proprio affacciata sul mare dove si erano fermate barche di pescatori. Lei, in preda all’ira, gettò dalla finestra tutti gli effetti personali di Burton, dai vestiti al resto. In paese è rimasta proverbiale la pesca miracolosa che i marinai fecero in quella notte di luna piena. Invece Walter Chiari, che era un giocherellone, si divertiva a travestirsi da cameriere e si presentava alla porta dei clienti con il carrello della colazione. Rizzoli ci si divertiva un mondo. E per dire come sono gli ischitani, una volta arrivò William Holden, spaventato d’essere aggredito dai fans. Chiese di non essere disturbato e di avvertire la popolazione a proposito del suo desiderio di privacy. Non ce ne fu bisogno. Un pomeriggio uscì a passeggio e nessuno lo riconobbe. Lui ci restò talmente male che chiese al portiere di svelare alla cittadinanza la sua identità, con in aggiunta la specifica: “trattasi di attore molto famoso”». 
Hollywood continua ad avere familiarità con Ischia. «Adesso abbiamo il GlobalFest, che Pascal Vicedomini ci propose cinque anni fa. Da allora ha preso piede, quest’anno abbiamo avuto tantissimi premi Oscar, la bellissima Hilary Swank che al tramonto si tuffava in mare in sottoveste, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu che invece si tuffava in panama bianco, De Laurentiis che non si tuffava proprio, tutti però estasiati dall’atmosfera semplice e rilassata. E ogni anno si portano altri amici».

Principio di austerità

Ieri era così, e oggi? «Nulla è cambiato, la gente famosa da noi viene a fare un bagno di semplicità. Da sempre abbiamo un bravissimo massaggiatore, Salvatore. L’avvocato Agnelli era uno dei suoi clienti fissi. Con gli anni si stabilì un rapporto di fiducia, tanto che quando l’avvocato morì, la gente del paese face la processione da Salvatore per fargli le condoglianze. Anche l’avvocato Grande Stevens è legato a una famiglia di marinai. Va a pesca con loro, ha imparato tutti segreti di una buona pescata e, quando il caldo cala, porta tutti i bambini, i suoi nipoti e quelli del marinaio, a fare passeggiate in campagna e a cogliere pomodori. E sono risate e gran divertimento». Gaddo della Gherardesca non passa giorno che non vada a trovare Ciro, il barbiere. Antonio Martusciello ingaggia una gara con i cuochi sulle polpette ogni volta che arriva «e noi - aggiunge Antonella - siamo obbligati a indovinare chi ha cucinato la polpetta più buona. Don Pietro, il parroco di Santa Restituta, è il depositario di tanti segreti di divi e no». 
Allora è la semplicità la chiave di lettura dell’isola? «Certo. E il fatto che tutto ti può spiazzare. Vuole sapere qual è la cosa più terribile che possa capitare a un ischitano? Dover andare a Napoli e dunque dover a forza prendere l’aliscafo. La maggior parte di loro ha paura». 

Il suo hotel diventò un set nel 1972, per Jack Lemmon e Juliet Mills

Nell’hotel Della Regina Isabella è stata ambientata una delle commedie americane di Billy Wilder più divertenti, «Che cosa è successo tra mio padre e tua madre?» (titolo originale: «Avanti!») con Jack Lemmon e Juliet Mills. Girata nel 1972 dentro l’albergo ischitano, la storia è tratta da un pièce di Samuel Taylor. I protagonisti sono perfetti (e Lemmon per questa interpretazione nel ‘73 vince il Golden Globe). Nel cast figurano anche alcuni caratteristi italiani, tra i quali un giovanissimo Pippo Franco nelle vesti dell’allampanato concierge.

Michela Tamburrino; La Stampa; 9/8/2007

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Un esempio ecclatante della vocazione contadina degli ischitani è rappresentato dal nostro vicino di casa, Gaetano: una persona simpaticissima, magnifica, e dal cuore d'oro. Gaetano di mestiere fa il muratore. Ha un orto bellissimo e un forno a legna stupendo e si diletta a preparare la pizza e il pane per la famiglia, per gli amici, per i parenti, e, fortuna nostra, per i vicini di casa! Eccolo:  

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Ed ecco un filmato di Gaetano in azione:

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A Ischia tutte le strade principali (eccetto una!) sono solo a due corsie, una per senso di marcia. Quindi, viaggiare in auto a Ischia, è una continuo sorpassare ed essere sorpassati. A volte si assiste al doppio sorpasso, cioè mentre si sorpassa, si è sorpassati a propria volta. E poi ci sono macchine e motorini che s'infilano e schizzano dappertutto. Roba da brividi per chi non è abituato eppure gli incidenti gravi sono pochi e i casi di «rabbia al volante» («road rage») sono rarissimi. Tutte le altre strade e stradine sono a una corsia solo, e alcune strade sono strettissime. Ecco perché è sciocco avere una macchina grande ed ecco perché molte delle macchine che percorrono l'isola non solo sono piccole ma molte sono anche ammaccate. Inoltre, essendo montagnosa, e siccome i centri storici sono antichi, le stradine sono strette e piene di curve e prima di affrontare una curva c'è l'abitudine di suonare il clacson per avvertire pedoni ed altre macchine. Inoltre, c'è una regola non scritta ma generalmente rispettata da tutti secondo la quale, se la strada è stretta e ripida e due veicoli, che vanno in senso di marcia contrario, s'incontrano, chi sta salendo ha l'obbligo di fare marcia indietro per infilarsi in un vicolo o in un viale, in modo da far passare l'altro veicolo che sta scendendo. Il motivo è chiaro: fare marcia indietro in salita è molto difficile. Per quanto riguarda gli autobus, è inutile munirsi di orario stampato, ma il servizio è abbastanza regolare ed è molto molto raro che si debba aspettare più di mezz'ora per un bus. Alcune fermate sono fornite di paline informative per indicare i tempi di attesa dell'autobus ma non funzionano. I bus, eccetto nelle ultime due settimane di luglio e nel mese di agosto, non sono eccessivamente affollati. Per chi fosse curioso di sapere quanto costa un viaggio in autobus a Ischia, il biglietto di corsa singola (Single journey ticket), acquistato in anticipo in edicola o in biglietteria, costa €1.20; se si acquista in autobus, pagando l'autista, costa €1.70. Il biglietto valido per 100 minuti (utile per chi deve prendere due bus) costa: €1.70. Il biglietto va assolutamnete convalidato perché ci sono per davvero i controllori. In basso, ecco alcune foto della stradina che porta, dalla strada principale, a casa nostra. Per farvi capire quanto sia stretta, c'è la foto di una macchina che sta salendo la stradina.

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Per darvi un'idea del traffico ischitano e del tipi di veicoli che circolano sulle strade di Ischia, ecco un breve filmato del traffico in piazza degli Eroi ad Ischia Porto:  

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Un veicolo che si vede molto spesso a Ischia è l'Ape [ah-peh] della Piaggio, che non ha niente a che fare con l'inglese: "ape". In basso, ecco le foto di un paio di Ape della Piaggio viste nelle strade di Ischia, seguite dalla descrizione dell'Ape fornita da Wikipedia, e una interessante descrizione tratta da una tesi di laurea dedicata appunto all'Ape di Lina Di Silverio:

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The Piaggio Ape (Italian for bee), sometimes referred to as Ape Piaggio, Apecar, Ape Car or just Ape, is a three-wheeled light commercial vehicle produced since 1948 by Piaggio. At the end of World War II, most Italians, badly affected by the war, lacked means of transport and, more importantly, the financial means to acquire and maintain full-sized four-wheeled vehicles. In 1947, the inventor of the Vespa, aircraft designer Corradino D'Ascanio, came up with the idea of building a light three-wheeled commercial vehicle to power Italy's economical reconstruction, an idea which found favour with Enrico Piaggio, the son of the firm's founder, Rinaldo. The very first Ape model and the mark immediately following it were mechanically a Vespa with two wheels added to the rear, with a flat-bed structure on top of the rear axle. The early sales brochures and adverts referred to the vehicle as the VespaCar or TriVespa. The first Apes featured 50 cc, 125 cc or 150 cc and more recently 175 cc engines. By the time of the 1964 Ape D, a cab was added to protect the driver from the elements. The Ape has been in continuous production since its inception and has been produced in a variety of different body styles in Italy and India. The name refers to the work ethic of this vehicle - "ape" in Italian means "bee". Controlled with scooter style handlebars (current TM version could be bought also with steering wheel), the original Ape was designed to seat one, but can accommodate a passenger (with a tight fit) in its cab. A door is provided on each side, making it quicker to get out of the vehicle when making deliveries to different sides of the road. Performance is suited to the job of light delivery, with good torque for hills but a low top speed, which is irrelevant in the urban settings for which it was designed. Outside of towns, Apes are customarily driven as close as possible to the kerb to allow traffic to pass. The Ape is still not an uncommon sight in Italy where its compact size allows it to negotiate narrow city streets and park virtually anywhere. In small southern villages, it is also often seen at the roadside where the load area is used as an impromptu market stall by farmers. The Ape is also commonly used as a promotion tool. Advertising hoardings are mounted in the load bay. The Ape's unusual looks can help draw attention to a brand or business. [Wikipedia]

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L'Ape: la nascita del primo veicolo commerciale 

L'Ape, il simbolo della ricostruzione italiana del secondo dopoguerra, nasce nel 1948, appena due anni dopo la nascita di un altro mito creato da casa Piaggio, la Vespa. Molti sono gli elementi che accomunano questi due veicoli (non a caso si dice che l'Ape sia nata "da una costola della Vespa"). Innanzitutto l'ideatore fu per entrambi Corradino D'Ascanio, l'ingegnere italiano che fu inoltre il padre del primo elicottero. In secondo luogo l'Ape trova un legame strettissimo con la Vespa anche nel design. Il primo modello non era altro che un veicolo su tre ruote derivato dallo scooter. Si trattava quasi di una Vespa a due ruote attaccata a un rimorchio e in alcuni prospetti di vendita e in taluni mercati venne infatti pubblicizzato come VespaCar o TriVespa. Il curioso nome dato al veicolo non arriva per caso ma deriva dall'idea di Enrico Piaggio di creare una sorta di famiglia di veicoli. 

Fu la Vespa ad iniziare la stirpe. Infatti, il nome "Vespa" fu coniato dallo stesso imprenditore. Fu scelto per la somiglianza tra la forma del veicolo e l'insetto (vita stretta e parte posteriore grossa) e per il leggero ronzio dello scooter. Ma l'analogia fisica si trasformò presto in un'analogia concettuale: lo scooter, come la vespa, vive in una comunità (è nota l'immagine di tante Vespa che nelle città danno l'impressione di "uno sciame d'argento") ma nello stesso tempo ha un'anima individuale. Allo stesso modo, il veicolo a tre ruote deve il proprio nome allo scopo per cui fu creato: alleggerire il lavoro a negozianti e piccole imprese. L'Ape fu vista come la "cugina lavoratrice" della Vespa. Negli anni successivi la Piaggio continuò la sua "collezione d’insetti" con un motore fuori bordo che fu chiamato Moscone. 

Il nome "Ape", come quello precedente di Vespa, ebbe un immediato successo e presto divenne popolare nonostante che la Piaggio non si servì di una grande campagna pubblicitaria. Era facile da memorizzare, comprensibile a tutti e la sua originalità colpì immediatamente i consumatori. La prova di questa affermazione deriva dal fatto che questo nome, con il passare del tempo, divenne parte del linguaggio quotidiano senza difficoltà. A parte il nome, è interessante capire il motivo della nascita dell'Ape. È lo stesso ideatore, Corradino D'Ascanio, che in un articolo della rivista "Piaggio" spiega il motivo dell'introduzione di questo veicolo nel mercato: 

"Si è trattato di colmare una lacuna nei mezzi di locomozione utilitaria del dopoguerra, portando sul mercato un motofurgone di piccola cilindrata di limitato consumo e di modesto prezzo d'acquisto e di manutenzione, facile alla guida, manovrabile nel più intenso traffico cittadino e soprattutto adatto al trasporto a domicilio della merce acquistata nei negozi". 

In breve, come la Vespa pochi anni prima, lo scopo era di aiutare un Paese impaurito dalla guerra a rianimare le proprie abitudini. L'Ape riesce infatti ad accelerare il ritmo del commercio. Il risultato di questa intuizione è eccellente: in poco tempo sciami di Ape iniziano a scorrazzare in un'Italia in bianco e nero portando sul cassone la scritta in bella grafia della ditta servita. 

L'Ape fu una straordinaria invenzione industriale: robusta, maneggevole, con un motore affidabile ed economico. Furono questi gli elementi che le permisero di divenire presto popolare in tutta Italia, sia in città sia nelle aree rurali. Nell'arco di pochi mesi fu annunciata una nuova versione dell'Ape: la "Giardinetta", che iniziò a trasportare i turisti all'interno delle più famose isole italiane grazie al comodo divanetto posizionato al posto del cassone. Ancora una volta l'Ape sorprende i clienti soddisfacendo un nuovo bisogno. 

Innovazioni e nuovi modelli erano introdotti frequentemente. Ad esempio la capacità del motore fu aumentata in quello che è conosciuto come "Modello C". Da questo modello inizia la produzione della carrozzeria in lamiera stampata, con l'introduzione della versione cabinata. Il pilota siede adesso su un sedile più comodo, la retromarcia è di serie e compare nel catalogo addirittura l'avviamento elettrico. Ape somiglia sempre più a un furgone. È un evento che apre un nuovo capitolo nella storia del veicolo. Non sorprende che in questo periodo lo slogan utilizzato era semplice e diretto: "Il veicolo che ti aiuta a guadagnare" (uno slogan che rimase invariato quasi invariato per molti anni). Questo spot rifletteva la natura realista degli italiani, che lavoravano faticosamente per superare un passato di povertà, un ricordo ancora vivo nella mente. Il lavoro era la strada più veloce per superare il passato e rendere la povertà solo un ricordo. 

L'Ape C con la sua monoscocca sostituisce il vecchio modello (quello in cui era stato solo aggiunto un carrello alla Vespa). È finalmente diventato un vero veicolo commerciale e diventa pronto ad affrontare il miracolo italiano degli anni Sessanta. Rimpiazzando i carri trainati dai cavalli o dai muli, l'Ape diventa l'emblema della modernizzazione. In questo periodo le persone che possiedono un'Ape sono moderne, vogliono scappare dalle tradizioni stagnanti che li avevano obbligati a lavorare nello stesso modo per generazioni. Erano persone diverse rispetto ai loro vicini, che sgobbavano molto e guadagnavano poco. Certo, le prime versioni non erano particolarmente attraenti dal punto di vista estetico, ma la sua versatilità permise di far sviluppare la fantasia dei piccoli e medi imprenditori. Si intuì che l'Ape, oltre ad essere un veicolo commerciale poteva essere anche un veicolo pubblicitario. Un esempio di questo fenomeno può essere l'Ape della pasticceria Sant'Ambroeus. 

Molto presto anche le grandi aziende iniziano a utilizzare l'Ape. La Motta fu una delle prime compagnie a utilizzare questo miracoloso veicolo a tre ruote che annunciava chiaramente "consegna a domicilio". Il grande centro commerciale Upim seguì l'azienda con un più anonimo veicolo, forse usato più per i servizi interni all'azienda. 

Sembra che questo veicolo abbia voluto seguire le orme della cugina Vespa, avviandosi a diventare una leggenda. Oltre ad essere un banale mezzo di trasporto, mira a diventare un vero e proprio "segno del tempo", meritando un posto nell'immaginario collettivo. Come la Vespa, riesce ancora oggi a suscitare emozioni venendo citata in film, libri, canzoni.

Estratto da: L'Ape Piaggio nel cinema e lo sviluppo della società italiana dal secondo Dopoguerra agli anni del miracolo economico di Lina Di Silverio (2012).

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Ad Ischia, l'Ape viene usato anche come taxi, e sono noti come "Micro-Taxi", anche se non sono più numerosi come una volta perché sostituiti da macchine più lussuose, ovviamente "climatizzate". C'è anche chi organizza il giro dell'isola in Micro-Taxi a rischio di fare intontire i clienti dato il frastuono che fa!  

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Sempre a proposito dell'Ape della Piaggio, è uscito proprio in questi giorni una nuova pubblicità della Vodafone Italia che ha come protagonista l'Ape Piaggio 500MP. Eccolo:  

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Continuando sul tema di spot pubblicitari, eccone uno molto simpatico per la Fiat 500 Cabrio, del 2010, girato ad Ischia, in cui la voce fuori campo imita quella dei cinegiornali degli anni '40, '50 e '60. Eccolo: 

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A proposito di cinegiornali, ecconi alcuni dell'Istituto Luce degli anni '50 dedicati all'Isola verde:

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Parlando degli anni '50, ecco un bell'articolo apparso nell'inserto Life & Leisure del Financial Review del 2008, in cui Rachel Donadio si reca a Ischia sperando di ritrovarvi echi degli anni '50. Stupenda la descrizione delle famiglie napoletane in spiaggia: «Today my fellow sun worshippers are Neapolitan families, chatting on mobile phones, smoking, eating rice salad from Tupperware and smearing sunblock on their children, little Caravaggios in Speedos.»  

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Ah, Ischia!" a Neapolitan friend said wistfully when I told him I was headed to the "green island", as it is known. "I spent every summer there as a kid. You know, those summers where three months last for years and years?" 

As soon as I made landfall on Capri's earthier neighbour, 24 kilometres off the coast of Naples, I knew exactly what he meant. A hard-driving New Yorker, I'd wanted a holiday from a holiday - a simple summer weekend at the beach, without the glitz and glamour found in most Italian seaside playgrounds. 

Indeed, if Capri is the Hamptons of Italy - all designer labels, whitewashed villas and not a bougainvillea out of place - then Ischia is the Jersey Shore: a laid-back and totally unfussy place that has managed to preserve the popolare feel of an everyman's break in the 1950s. (The island was the languid backdrop to Anthony Minghella's film The Talented Mr Ripley.) 

A stone causeway connects the cobbled streets of Ischia Ponte to the island's most famous sight, the Castello Aragonese, a fortress that looks like a Mediterranean Mont Saint-Michel. (The Castello also houses a lovely and surprisingly inexpensive pensione, in which I stayed.) 

I clomped around the castle, admiring the views of Monte Epomeo and visiting the gardens, where agave sprouts from volcanic rock, and the medieval chapel, with its Giotto-like frescoes. 

There were few other visitors. Most holidaymakers were outside, sunbathing like so many colourful seals on the large rocks off the causeway. I staked out my initial sunbathing spot at Baia di San Montano, a tiny half-moon cove on Ischia's north-west coast, choosing a cheap stabilimento, or beach club, over the pools at the fancier spa nearby. 

Beach resorts began sprouting up here in the 1950s, when the Milanese publishing mogul Angelo Rizzoli started building on the island and urged his jet-setting friends to follow. 

The island's famous thermal springs later made it popular with rheumatic Germans who came to take the waters, especially back when the Deutsche Mark was strong. Today my fellow sun worshippers are Neapolitan families, chatting on mobile phones, smoking, eating rice salad from Tupperware and smearing sunblock on their children, little Caravaggios in Speedos. 

W. H. Auden, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Joseph Brodsky all visited Ischia and wrote about 
it, but the island is hardly on the literary circuit. It's more suitable for beach reading. In one bookstore, a woman came in search of something light for her high-school-aged daughter. "She has to read The Betrothed this summer, poverina [poor thing]," the mother told the shop assistant. "So I told her she could pick out something fun." (After Dante, few school-mandated books are more despised by Italians than Alessandro Manzoni's masterpiece.) The assistant nodded sympathetically and pointed her to a young-adult tome. 

Even the police, in their short-sleeved summer uniforms, loosen up during the high season. 
Parking my tiny rented Fiat near the castle at aperitivo hour, I asked an officer when I had to move it the next morning. "At eight," he answered. "Eight?" I asked. "Isn't that a little early?" 
"Yeah, OK. Let's say nine," he replied. "Frankly, nothing really happens before nine around here anyway." Then I reminded him that the next day was Sunday. "Oh, right," the officer said. "Then you can park, no problem." 

One fancy exception to Ischia's down-to-earth vibe is Giardini La Mortella, a stunning and weird pleasure garden whose lush, exotic greenery extends along a volcanic hillside. Filled with orchids and grottoes, rare lotus flowers and a pond with lilypads over half a metre wide, it was designed by Russell Page in 1956 at the behest of English composer William Walton, who built it for his wife. Jungle-like and disorienting, it has an air of film noir and romantic obsession. 

One morning, I took a public bus to the little town of Sant'Angelo on the southern shore 
to check out another beach. Inside, it was standing room only - but a lazy white dog had curled up on one of the few seats. "I think it climbed aboard at the start of the trip," a fellow passenger said, answering my puzzled look. The driver finessed the narrow, twisting roads with bravado. When another bus approached, the bumpers of the two orange hulks nearly smooched in greeting before one backed up and courteously allowed the other room to pass. An elegant pas de deux. 

Descending to the sea from the hills of Sant'Angelo, whose shops sell colourful floats and volleyball sets, I walked the Spiaggia dei Maronti beachfront, past hotels and spas offering 
mud treatments. Stabilimento after stabilimento extended along the shore, each with its own umbrella colour, price list and nearby cafe. I chose an outpost near the end, and a chubby pre-teen boy ushered me to a spot near the water. Unsmiling, he marked in his book that I'd paid. 

I lay down on my lettino and closed my eyes, lulled by the waves and the sounds of Italian. 
Nearby, some children were building a sandcastle. An older couple lay facing each other on their chairs, giggling over marital confidences. Every so often, vendors walked by: a Moroccan selling bathing suits, a Neapolitan with plastic tchotchkes for one euro, a wiry old man in Ray-Bans, a singlet and a knee bandage shouting, "Graffe! Graffe!' - deliciously chewy doughnuts coated in granulated sugar. Half asleep, I tried to parse regional accents. 

The cashier at a restaurant where I had a plate of melon said that most visitors were Italians and other Europeans. But recently, she noted, there had been more Americans and Russians. 

Later at a newsstand, I noticed newspapers in Cyrillic alongside the usual British and German ones. But something else there caught my eye, a vestige of the days before BlackBerrys and internet cafes, when leaving home meant leaving home. It was a day-old copy of the International Herald Tribune. I half expected, and half hoped, it would be dated 1956 . 

Rachel Donadio (The New York Times; 2008).

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Io, in questo articolo di blog, sto tessendo le lodi alla vocazione contadina dell'isola d'Ischia che perdura nonostante gli enormi cambiamenti che sono avvenuti negli ultimi decenni, ma è doveroso ricordare quanto fosse dura, e spesso misera, la vita dei contadini italiani fino a non tanto tempo fa, fino agli anni '60, quelli del boom economico. Ecco quindi un estratto (in inglese ed in italiano) del bel libro di Elio Vittorini, Conversazione in Sicilia, libro che inizia con la memorabile frase: «Io ero, quell' inverno, in preda ad astratti furori.» Segue un estratto del libro di Paul Ginzburg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943 - 1988, in cui il bravissimo storico inglese tratteggia le condizioni economiche dell'Italia negli anni antecedenti al boom economico. Seguono infine tre video: il primo, breve ma molto bello, è tratto da una serie di inchieste documentarie di Ugo Zatterin, dal titolo La donna che lavora, trasmesse dalla RAI nel 1959, in cui una famiglia di contadini toscani parla delle loro condizioni di vita; segue un episodio (di ben ventisei!) di un documentario straordinario della BBC del 1999, People's Century. L'episodio che vi propongo qui, 1948: Boomtime, parla dello sviluppo economico dell'Europa dopo la seconda guerra mondiale. Parte dell'episodio è dedicata all'Italia, quindi vi proponiamo, separatamente, lo spezzone che tratta dell'Italia, seguito dall'episodio completo.

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Pioveva, sul molo della Stazione Marittima dove il piccolo treno che avrei preso aspettava; e della folla di siciliani scesa dal battello-traghetto parte se ne andarono, il bavero della giacca rialzato, le mani in tasca, attraverso il piazzale nella pioggia; parte restarono, con donne e sacchi e panieri, come dianzi a bordo, immobili, in piedi, sotto la tettoia. 

Il treno aspettava di essere allungato coi vagoni che avevano passato il mare sul battello; e questo era una lunga manovra; e io mi ritrovai vicino al piccolo siciliano dalla moglie bambina che di nuovo sedeva sul sacco ai suoi piedi. 

Stavolta egli mi sorrise vedendomi, eppur era disperato, con le mani in tasca, al freddo, al vento, ma sorrise, con la bocca, di sotto alla visiera di panno che gli copriva metà della faccia. 

– Ho dei cugini in America, – disse. – Uno zio e dei cugini... 

– Ah, cosí, - dissi io. - E in che posto? A New York o in Argentina? 

– Non lo so, – rispose lui. – Forse a New York. Forse in Argentina. In America. 

Cosi disse e soggiunse: – Di che posto siete voi? – lo? – dissi io. – Nacqui a Siracusa ... 

E lui disse: – No ... Di che posto siete dell'America? – Di... Di New York, – dissi io. 

Un momento fummo zitti, io su questa menzogna, guardandolo, e lui guardando me, dai suoi occhi nascosti sotto la visiera del berretto. 

Poi, quasi teneramente, egli chiese: – Come va a New York? Va bene? 

– Non ci si arricchisce, – risposi io. 

– Che importa questo? – disse lui. – Si può star bene senza arricchire ... Anzi è meglio ... 

– Chissà! – dissi io. – C'è anche lí disoccupazione. 

– E che importa la disoccupazione? – disse lui. – Non è sempre la disoccupazione che fa il danno ... Non è questo ... Non sono disoccupato, io. 

Indicò gli altri piccoli siciliani intorno. 

– Nessuno di noi lo è. Lavoriamo ... Nei giardini ... Lavoriamo. 

E si fermò, mutò voce, soggiunse: – Siete tornato per la disoccupazione, voi? 

– No, – io dissi. – Sono tornato per qualche giorno. 

– Ecco, – disse lui. – E mangiate la mattina ... Un siciliano non mangia mai la mattina. 

E chiese: – Mangiano tutti in America la mattina? Avrei potuto dire di no, e che anche io, di solito, non mangiavo la mattina, e che conoscevo tanta gente che non mangiava forse più di una volta al giorno, e che in tutto il mondo era lo stesso, eccetera, ma non potevo parlargli male di un'America dove non ero stato, e che, dopotutto, non era nemmeno l'America, nulla di attuale, di effettivo, ma una sua idea di regno dei cieli sulla terra. Non potevo; non sarebbe stato giusto. 

– Credo di sì, – risposi. – In un modo o in un altro ... 

– E il mezzogiorno? – egli chiese allora. – Mangiano tutti il mezzogiorno, in America? 

– Credo di sì, – dissi io. – In un modo o in un altro ... 

– E la sera? – egli chiese. – Mangiano tutti, la sera, in America? 

– Credo di sì, – dissi io. – Bene o male ... 

– Pane? – disse lui. – Pane e formaggio? Pane e verdure? Pane e carne? 

Era con speranza che lui mi parlava e io non potevo piu dirgli di no. 

– Sì, – dissi. – Pane e altro. 

E lui, piccolo siciliano, restò muto un pezzo nella speranza, poi guardò ai suoi piedi la moglie bambina che sedeva immobile, scura, tutta chiusa, sul sacco, e diventò disperato, e disperatamente, come dianzi a bordo, si chinò e sfilò un po' di spago dal paniere, tirò fuori un'arancia, e disperatamente l'offrì, ancora chino sulle gambe piegate, alla moglie e, dopo il rifiuto senza parole di lei, disperatamente fu avvilito con l'arancia in mano, e cominciò a pelarla per sé, a mangiarla lui, ingoiando come se ingoiasse maledizioni. 

– Si mangiano a insalata, – io dissi, – qui da noi. 

– In America? – chiese il siciliano. 

– No, – io dissi, – qui da noi. 

– Qui da noi? – il siciliano chiese. – A insalata con l'olio? 

– Si, con l'olio, – dissi io. – E uno spicchio d'aglio, e il sale ... 

– E col pane? – disse il siciliano. 

– Sicuro, – io risposi. – Col pane. Ne mangiavo sempre quindici anni fa, ragazzo ... 

– Ah, ne mangiavate? – disse il siciliano. – Stavate bene anche allora, voi? 

– Cosí, cosí, – io risposi. 

E soggiunsi: – Mai mangiato arance a insalata, voi? 

– Sì, qualche volta, – disse il siciliano. – Ma non sempre c'è l'olio. 

– Già, – io dissi. – Non sempre è buona annata ... L'olio può costar caro. 

– E non sempre c'è il pane, – disse il siciliano. – Se uno non vende le arance non c'è il pane. E bisogna mangiare le arance ... Cosi, vedete? 

E disperatamente mangiava la sua arancia, bagnate le dita, nel freddo, di succo d'arancia, guardando ai suoi piedi la moglie bambina che non voleva arance. 

– Ma nutriscono molto, – dissi io. – Potete vendermene qualcuna? 

Il piccolo siciliano finí d'inghiottire, si pulí le mani nelIa giacca. 

– Davvero? – esclamò. E si chinò sul suo paniere, vi scavò dentro, sotto la tela, mi porse quattro, cinque, sei arance. 

– Ma perché? – io chiesi. – È cosi difficile vendere le arance? 

– Non si vendono, – egli disse. – Nessuno ne vuole. 

Il treno intanto era pronto, allungato dei vagoni che avevano passato il mare. 

– All'estero non ne vogliono, – continuò il piccolo siciliano. – Come se avessero il tossico. Le nostre arance. E il padrone ci paga cosí. Ci dà le arance ... E noi non sappiamo che fare. Nessuno ne vuole. Veniamo a Messina, a piedi, e nessuno ne vuole ... Andiamo a vedere se ne vogliono a Reggio, a Villa San Giovanni, e non ne vogliono ... Nessuno ne vuole. 

Squillò la trombetta del capotreno, la locomotiva fischiò. 

– Nessuno ne vuole... Andiamo avanti, indietro, paghiamo il viaggio per noi e per loro, non mangiamo pane, nessuno ne vuole ... Nessuno ne vuole. 

Il treno si mosse, saltai a uno sportello. - Addio, addio! 

– Nessuno ne vuole... Nessuno ne vuole... Come se avessero il tossico ... Maledette arance. 

Conversazione in Sicilia - Elio Vittorini (1941)

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Of the crowd of Sicilians getting off the ferry, one group departed, hands in pockets, the collars of their jackets turned up, crossing the esplanade in the rain; the rest stayed standing immobile under the station awning, with their women and sacks and baskets, just as they had stood a short time before on board the ferry. 

The train waited for the carriages that had crossed over on the boat to be attached, and this manoeuvre took a long time; and I found myself again near the little Sicilian with the child-wife who was once again seated on the sack at his feet. 

This time he smiled when he saw me, even though he was desperate, with his hands in his pockets, in the cold, in the wind, but his mouth smiled under the cloth visor that covered half his face. 

"I have cousins in America," he said. "An uncle and some cousins." 

"Oh, I see," I said. 'Where are they, in New York or in Argentina?" 

"I don't know," he answered. "Maybe in New York.  Maybe in Argentina. In America." 

He added, 'Where are you from?" 

"Me?" I said, "I was born in Siracusa ... " 

And he said, "No ... Where are you from in America?" 

"From ... from New York," I said. 

We were silent for a moment, me in my lie, looking at him, and him looking at me from eyes hidden under the visor of his cap.

Then, almost tenderly, he asked: "How are things in New York? Good?" 

"One doesn't get rich," I responded. 

"So what?" he said. "You can do well without getting rich. In fact it's better that way ... " 

"Who knows," I said. "There's unemployment there too." 

"So what?" he said. "It's not always unemployment that does the damage ... It's not that. I'm not unemployed." He pointed to the other little Sicilians around him. "None of us is unemployed. We work, in the orchards ... We work." 

He stopped, then in a low voice added: "You're coming back because of unemployment?" 

"No," I said. "I'm just back for a few days." 

"There you go," he said. "And you eat in the morning ... A Sicilian never eats in the morning. Does everyone in America eat in the moming?" 

I could have told him no, that sometimes even I didn't eat in the morning, and that I knew many people who didn't eat perhaps more than once a day, and that all over the world it was the same, et cetera, but I couldn't speak ill to him of an America where I had never been and which, after all, wasn't even America, was nothing real, concrete, but his idea of the reign of heaven on earth. I couldn't do it; it wouldn't have been right. 

"I think so," I answered. "One way or another ... " 

"And at midday?" he asked then. "Does everyone eat at Midday, in America?" 

"I think so," I said. "One way or another ... " 

"And in the evening?" he asked. "Does everyone eat in the evening, in America?" 

"I think so," I said. 'Well or poorly ... ' 

"Bread?" he asked. "Bread and cheese? Bread and vegetables? Bread and meat?" 

He was talking to me so hopefully I could no longer say no to him. 

"Yes," I said. "Bread and other things." 

The little Sicilian remained silent in his hope for a while, then he looked at his child-wife sitting immobile, dark, as dosed in on herself, on the sack at his feet and he became desperate, and desperately, as on board the boat, he bent over and undid a bit of the twine of the basket, pulled out an orange, and desperately offered it to her; again he bent towards his wife on bended knee, and after her wordless refusal was desperately discouraged with the orange in hand, and began to peel it for himself, to eat it himself, swallowing as if swallowing curses. 

"We eat them in a salad," I said, "here at home."

"In America?" the Sicilian asked. 

"No," I said, "here, at home." 

"Here?" the Sicilian asked. "In a salad with oil?" 

"Yes, with oil," I said. "And a clove of garlic, and salt ... " 

"With bread?" said the Sicilian. 

"Sure," I answered. "With bread. Fifteen years ago, when I was a boy, that's what we ate all the time." 

"Oh, that's what you ate?" the Sicilian said. "You were well off even then?" 

"More or less," I answered. "Haven't you ever eaten oranges in a salad?" 

"Yes, sometimes," the Sicilian said. "But we don't always have oil." 

"Of course," I said. "The harvest isn't always good ... Oil can be expensive." 

"And we don't always have bread," said the Sicilian. "If we don't sell our oranges there's no bread. And then we have to eat the oranges ... Like this, you see?" And desperately he ate his orange, bathing his fingers in the juice of the orange in the cold, looking down at his feet at the child-wife who didn't want any oranges. 

"But they're very nutritious," I said. "Can you sell me one?" 

The little Sicilian finished swallowing, and wiped his hands on his jacket. 

"Really?" he exclaimed. And he bent over his basket, dug inside, under the doth, and pulled out four, five, six oranges. 

"But why so many?" I asked. "Is it that difficult to sell oranges?" 

"They don't sell," he said. "No one wants them." 

The train was now ready, lengthened with the carriages that had come over the sea. 

"They don't want them abroad," the little Sicilian continued. "As if they were poisoned. Our oranges. And the boss pays us this way, in oranges ... And we don't know what to do. No one wants them. We come to Messina, by foot, and no one wants any ...We go to see if they want some in Reggio, in Villa San Giovanni, and they don't want any ... No one wants them."

Conversations in Sicily - Elio Vittorini (Translated by Alane Salierno Mason; New Directions; 2000)

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Italy in the mid-1950s was still, in many respects, an underdeveloped country. Its industrial sector could boast of some advanced elements in the production of steel cars, electrical energy 
and artificial fibres, but these were limited both geographically, being confined mainly to the north-west, and in their weight in the national economy as a whole. Most Italians still earned their living, if they earned it at aIl, in the traditional sectors of the economy: in smaIl technologically backward, labour-intensive firms, in the public administration, in a great proIiferation of small shops and trades, in agriculture. Standards of living remained very low. In 1951 the elementary combination of electricity, drinking water and an inside lavatory could be found in only 7.4 per cent of Italian households. 

Agriculture was still by far the largest single sector of employment. In the census of 1951 the category "agriculture, hunting and fishing" accounted for 42.2 per cent of the working population, and this figure rose to 56.9 per cent for the South. Apart from the dynamic and prosperous farms on the plains of the Po, Italian agriculture presented a picture of substantial backwardness, with growth rates inferior to those of Yugoslavia and Greece. The 1950s saw a marked increase in the fragmentation of property. In the central areas of the peninsula the time-honoured sharecropping system began to decline rapidly. Young peasants were increasingIy reluctant to follow in their parents' footsteps; the landowners found their profit margins end authority diminishing; the buoyancy of the land market encouraged then to sell, most often directly to the sharecropping families themselves. In the South, as we have seen, a similar process of land sales was in operation, and peasants throughout the peninsula benefited from the law of February 1948 which had established the system of rural mortgages repayable over forty years. The effect of these land sales and the agrarian reform was to increase the amount of smallholding property by nearly 10 per cent in the period 1947-55. 

This increase in ownership did not lead to a golden age of peasant farming. Rather, the selection process which we have examined in detail for the Calabrian reform area (see pp. 133-5) applied broadly to small farms in the rest of the peninsula. For a minority of new properties, situated in fertile areas and aided by the reform boards and the public works of the Cassa per il Mezzogiomo, the way was open for crop specialization and production for the market; for the majority in the hill and mountain regions there were no such prospects. In these regions, in both the Centre and the South, the peasant holdings were too small, poor and dispersed, and state aid too limited, to make anything more than subsistence farming possible, Thus land ownership, the perennial dream of the Italian peasantry, had become more widespread, but the terms and extent of ownership offered a means to survive rather than to prosper. 

For many millions of the rural population there was not even the consolation of a small plot of land. In 1953 the parliamentary inquest on unemployment estimated that 48 per cent of the rural workforce of the South was drastically underemployed, and the figures for the Centre (43.8 per cent) and the Veneto (41.3 per cent) were little better. In the 1950s, as in previous decades, this vast reserve army of labour could find only very partial satisfaction for its work hunger. 

One outlet was emigration. This took a number of different forms, the most dramatic of which was emigration overseas, to the Americas and Australia. Between 1946 and 1957 the numbers of those leaving Italy for the New World exceeded by 1,100,000 the numbers of those returning: 380.000 had remained in Argentina, 166,500 in Canada, 166,000 in the USA, 138.000 in Australia and 128.000 in Venezuela. They were for the most part artisans and peasant proprietors rather than landless labourers, nearly 70 per cent were from the South, and by 1957 many of them had settled permanently abroad. In the Calabrian villages, South America in particular was dubbed 'e d'u scuordo, "the land of forgetting". 

Another pattern of emigration, of a rather different sort, was that to north Europe. Between 1946 and 1957 the numbers heading north exceeded by 840,000 the numbers of those who came back: France took the lion's share (381,000), followed by Switzerland (202,000) and Belgium (159,000). The emigrants to these countries tended to go for shorter periods, on six-month or one-year contracts, and regarded work abroad as a temporary rather than a permanent solution to their problems. 

Within Italy itself, the Industrial Triangle exercised only a limited pull in these years, mainly upon the rural populations of Lombardy, Piedmont and the Veneto. All the major cities and towns of the peninsula attracted a certain influx of rural labourers seeking work primarily in the building trades. There was also a small but significant flow of migrants, mainly rural labourers, from the deep South to other rural areas of Italy - to Tuscany, the Bolognese countryside and the Ligurian coast. 

All these movements of population, as well as the increase in peasant land ownership and the work of the reform boards and the Cassa, ensured that the world of rural Italy was not immobile in the 1950s. And yet continuities still far outweighed changes. When in the mid-fifties the American sociologist Edward Banfield went to the village of Chiaramonte in Basilicata, he persuaded one of the peasants, Carlo Prato, to keep a diary for 1955. Prato, who was forty-three and married with two children, managed to find 180 days' work that year. In December and January he was employed on an olive-oil press in a nearby town, sleeping in barracks, working from two in the morning until nine at night and earning three meals, a little cash and half a litre of oil a day. After that he was unemployed until he found a job on a road gang some three hours' walk from his home. In the summer he found decent wages with the major landowners of his village, but in the autumn months he had no work at all and just pottered around his tiny plot of land. The Pratos lived in a one-room house which they owned. In the summer it was alive with flies. There was no drinking water, no electridty, no lavatory. Although the winter at Chiaramonte was cold and wet, Prato's jacket was the only warm outer garment possessed by the family. Prato's wife suffered from permanent ill-health. 

The years 1958-63 saw the beginning of a social revolution which was to turn the world of Carlo Prato upside down. In less than two decades Italy ceased to be a peasant country and became one of the major industrial nations of the West. The very landscape of the country as well as its inhabitants' places of abode and ways of life changed profoundly. It is to the origins of this transformation and its first extraordinary years that this chapter is dedicated. 

A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943 - 1988 - Paul Ginsborg (Penguin; 1990)

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Sempre a proposito di quanto fosse dura, e spesso misera, la vita dei contadini italiani fino agli anni '60, ricordo una polemica singolare scoppiata nel 2010 quando un popolare gastronomo italiano, Beppe Bigazzi, ospite fisso del programma della RAI La prova del cuoco, e che all'epoca aveva 77 anni, ricordò, citando un proverbio delle sue parti, che negli anni '30 e '40, nel mese di febbraio, c'era l'usanza tra le famiglie più povere del Valdarno, di mangiare la carne di gatto, affermazione che poi portò alla sua sospensione dal programma. Ecco come Wikipedia Italia ci spiega l'episodio, seguito dall'articolo de The Guardian del 17/2/10 dedicato appunto al caso:  

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Il 15 febbraio 2010 viene comunicato durante la diretta de La prova del cuoco che Bigazzi è stato sospeso dalla trasmissione. Il presentatore aveva citato un proverbio toscano che dice "a berlingaccio chi non ha ciccia ammazza il gatto" (che significa letteralmente "il giovedì grasso chi non ha più carne da mangiare si ciba del gatto") riferito a quando, in passato, ci si cibava anche di gatti per sopperire alla mancanza di proteine durante la fine del periodo invernale. Bigazzi spiegò la procedura utilizzata per trattare la carne dell'animale per migliorarne il sapore, riferendo altresì di averla consumata in diverse occasioni. A seguito delle polemiche suscitate dal caso, lo stesso Bigazzi ha avuto modo di spiegare al Corriere della Sera il reale senso delle sue frasi dichiarando:

« Negli anni '30 e '40 come tutti gli abitanti del Valdarno a febbraio si mangiava il gatto al posto del coniglio, così come c'era chi mangiava il pollo e chi non avendo niente andava a caccia di funghi e tartufi non ancora cibi di lusso. Del resto liguri e vicentini facevano altrettanto e i proverbi ce lo ricordano. Questo non vuol dire mangiare oggi la carne di gatto, ho solo rievocato usanze. »

Il 28 febbraio 2013 fa il suo ritorno alla La prova del cuoco e dal settembre dello stesso anno torna a far parte del cast fisso del programma culinario di Rai 1.

Wikipedia Italia

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Italian TV chef axed after recommending cat stew: 

Complaints pour in after 77-year-old Giuseppe Bigazzi expresses a fondness for feline flesh live on air.

Among other things, Giuseppe "Beppe" Bigazzi is known for his prize-winning cookbook La cucina semplice dei sapori d'Italia ("The simple cuisine of the flavours of Italy"). But as of this week, the flavour with which the TV gastronome is likely to be most closely associated is that of stewed cat.

Bigazzi is familiar to millions of viewers of the publicly-owned RAI network as the white-haired co-presenter of a popular pre-lunchtime programme, La prova del cuoco ("The proof of the cook"). But today he was experiencing his first day without television commitments in 10 years after being axed for expressing his enthusiasm for the flesh of felines.

His remarks came after mentioning how, in the desperate conditions of post-war Italy, some people had taken to boiling stray mogs.

As his fellow-presenter, Elisa Isoardi, looked on aghast, the 77-year-old Bigazzi told viewers that, far from being a last resort in times of near-famine, gatto in umido was "one of the great dishes of the Valdarno [in Tuscany]".

The secret, he disclosed, was to leave the cat in a fast-running stream for three days. "What comes out is a delicacy", he enthused. "Many a time I've eaten its white meat."

Isoardi, herself a cat owner, tried to interrupt, but to no avail. Cat in a thick sauce was "better than chicken, rabbit or pigeon", he said.

During a commercial break, the producers unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the celebrity gourmet that he should apologise when the programme resumed. Soon afterwards, RAI's switchboard was jammed with calls from appalled viewers.

Bigazzi was today quoted by the newspaper Corriere della Sera as saying he had been referring to events in the past, adding: "You can't judge things from 70 years ago".

But that was not enough for Italy's National Animal Protection Board, whose president, Carla Rocchi, announced she had instructed its lawyers to begin proceedings against Bigazzi for inciting cruelty to animals.

A junior minister in Silvio Berlusconi's government, Francesca Martini, said what had happened was "of the utmost gravity".

Not everyone agreed, however. The blogosphere was today buzzing with comments, some in Bigazzi's favour. One maintained that it was "truly astonishing" that Bigazzi had been dropped by RAI "for having recollected a recipe from his native region, albeit one not acceptable to most people".

By John Hooper - The Guardian; 17/2/2010

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Ecco in basso il segmento "incriminante" de La prova del cuoco del 10/2/10 in cui Bigazzi racconta di aver mangiato la carne di gatto alla conduttrice del programma di allora, Elisa Isoardi. Segue il servizio della CNN dedicato alla polemica e, infine, l'intervento molto bello ed interessante, e molto meno polemico, di Bigazzi a La prova del cuoco del 6/1/14 in cui spiega ad Antonella Clerici che cosa trovava, da bambino, negli anni '30, nella calza della Befana e che ci ricorda ancora una volta quanto fosse povera la vita dei contadini italiani.

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Ultimissimo contributo a questa lungo digressione a proposito della vita dei contadini prima del boom economico. Uno storico inglese, John Dickie, autore di Delizia: The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food, offre una riflessione davvero affascinante - con la quale si può essere o non essere d'accordo ma che indubbiamente fa riflettere - sul contributo della cosiddetta cucina povera, quella contadina, al concetto di cucina italiana che abbiamo oggigiorno prendendo spunto dalla pubblicità del Mulino Bianco, una nota marca italiana di biscotti. Ecco Dickie a proposito:      

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Italians eat lots of biscuits, mostly for breakfast. In 1989 leading biscuit brand Il Mulino Bianco was looking for a set for its new advertising campaign. The White Mill shown on the packets was about to become a real place. The industrialised Po valley - flat and featureless - had distinctly the wrong image, thus ruling out locations in the region around Parma where the biscuits were actually made. Instead set researchers found what they were looking for, abandoned and almost derelict, off the Massetana road near Chiusdino in Tuscany. The old building was given a coat of white paint and a new mill wheel powered by an electric motor. In a short time it was ready to receive its imaginary family of owners. Dad was a square-jawed journalist; Mum, a pretty but prim teacher; their children, Linda with curly hair and a bonnet, and Andrea in slacks and a tie, were as smart-but-casual as their parents; a marshmallow-eyed grandfather completed the group. This, as the company website would have it, was a 'modern family who leave the city and choose to live healthily by going back to nature'. Their story, to be told in a series of mini-episodes, was to embody the second-home aspirations of millions of urban consumers. And to tell it, the agency hired two of the biggest talents in Italian cinema: Giuseppe Tornatore, fresh from winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Film with Cinema Paradiso; and Ennio Morricone, famed for his scores to the spaghetti westerns (among other things). 

The result, between 1990 and 1996, was perhaps the most successful campaign in the history of Italian television. So successful, in fact, that droves of people from traffic-clogged Naples, Rome and Milan started to search the hills of Tuscany for the White Mill they had seen in the biscuit ads. Queues of cars stretched back to the ruins of the San Galgano abbey. Visitors approached the site in reverential silence as if they were entering a shrine. The mill's owner recalls: 'There were real processions. Hundreds of people came to visit the mill at weekends. Most of them were disappointed because obviously it wasn't like it was on television. Only the kids were happy: they ran around enthusiastically amid all the plasterboard and polystyrene. ' 

After the last Il Mulino Bianco advertisement had been filmed in 1996, the White Mill changed again; it was transformed into another, more tasteful manifestation of the Italian rural idyll. The owner spent four years restoring it and converting it into an agriturismo - the kind of rustic hotel-restaurant that has become so popular in Italy over the last twenty years or so. The building reverted to its old name, Il Mulino delle Pile - the Battery Mill (it used to supply electricity to Chiusdino before the war). A swimming-pool was put in and the stonework sandblasted clear of paint. But even if it is no longer white, the White Mill still answers to the same nostalgia for country food as does the brand that made it famous. It still attracts plenty of people who want to hold celebratory banquets for their weddings, birthdays and anniversaries where the adverts were set. Children still ask the owner whether he makes all the biscuits. 

The rooms in the agriturismo Il Mulino delle Pile conform to an ideal of simple country elegance. The menu in its Old Grindstone Restaurant conforms to current canons of what is good to eat: 'authentic, typical Tuscan cuisine, based on fresh, seasonal produce'. An antipasto of Tuscan sliced salami and hams, or pecorino cheese with honey. A primo of tagliatelle with wild boar ragù - boar is a speciality. A secondo of Sienese entrecôte, or braised beef in Morellino wine, or local sausages with beans. A dessert of vinsanto and cantucci biscuits. 

It is not the best restaurant you could find in Italy. Nor is its menu quite as authentic as it claims: there are some concessions to fashion (fillet of beef in balsamic vinegar and green peppercorns), and some national and international favourites, like penne all'arrabbiata, aubergines alla parmigiana, and veal escalopes. Maybe the persistent memory of those famous biscuit adverts makes it all just too kitsch. But I can personally attest that the food at the Old Grindstone Restaurant is, without a trace of doubt or irony, delicious: One can eat twice as well here as anywhere one could find in London for four times the price. The Old Grindstone Restaurant is evidence of the indisputable fact that gastronomic standards in Italy are as high as anywhere in the world. 

How did the Italians come to eat so well? The story of the White Mill has a simple lesson for anyone trying to find a historical answer to that question: it is possible to love Italian food without going misty-eyed about the fables that are spun round it, whether in Italy or abroad. Italy has become the model to imitate when it comes to making ingredients, cooking them, and eating them. Some people believe that our health, environment and quality of life may depend on whether we can learn some of the food lessons that Italy has to offer. All the more reason why we need less syrupy stories about how Italian food got where it is today than advertising and cookbooks have told. 

The White Mill itself may be unknown outside Italy, but the family of images to which it belongs is all too recognisable across much of the western world: the trattoria in the olive grove; the hams suspended from the rafters of a farmhouse kitchen; the sun-weathered old peasant with a twinkle in his eye; the noisy family gathered under the pergola while mamma serves the pasta. These same cliches recur in countless recipe collections, countless adverts for olive oil or those jars of unspeakable pasta sauce. Together, they weave a powerful rural myth that finds its favourite setting in Tuscany. What that myth conjures up for us is a cuisine made from a thousand ancient country traditions; it is Italian food as peasant food. If the White Mill image of Tuscany has helped give Italian food a respectable claim to being the most popular cuisine in the world, then it has also helped make it the most widely misperceived. The Italian cuisine that the world so admires has surprisingly little to do with peasants. 

In Italy, nostalgia for the rustic way of life is a recent development. The success of brands like II Mulino Bianco only came when the vast majority of Italians had left the hardship of the countryside safely behind. In Tuscany, the share-cropping system shielded the peasantry from the worst of the hunger and toil that was the timeless lot of the rural masses up and down the peninsula until as late as the 1960s. But even here, the contribution that dishes of exclusively peasant origin have made to local cuisine is not as great as the recent cult of peasant food would have us believe. The menu of the Old Grindstone Restaurant is not representative of the country fare of yore. Nor is there anything poor about quite a few of the recipes one can find in books on la cucina povera toscana, like bistecca alla fiorentina (a thick Florentine T-bone or porterhouse steak), or liver crostini with Marsala. The rural masses could only dream of such delights. And even genuine peasant cooking has been the subject of a rebranding exercise. Like the medieval mill near Chiusdino, it has been extensively reconstructed and rethought by contemporary Italians. 

Until the middle of the twentieth century ordinary people in the Italian countryside ate very badly - countless documents tell us as much. Such, for example, was the uniform conclusion of the many inquiries into the state of the Italian countryside conducted in the decades after Italy became a unified country in 1861. The poverty of the peasant diet still echoes in a number of proverbs that have been handed down. 

When the peasant eats a chicken, either the peasant is ill, or the chicken is. Among the poor of the countryside, chicken was a costly rarity reserved for the sick. Peasants were often only able to eat animals that had died of disease. 

Garlic is the peasant's spice cupboard. Spices were essential to sophisticated cuisine from the middle ages until at least the seventeenth century. But the rural masses couldn't afford them. Garlic, leek and onion, by contrast, stank of poverty. Which is not to imply that the well-to-do refused to eat these pungent vegetables - just that they looked down on anyone who had no alternative when it came to giving food flavour. 

St Bernard's sauce makes food seem good. St Bernard's sauce was the most important ingredient in the peasant diet for most of the last millennium. But happily the recipe has now faded from memory. It means 'hunger'. 

A history of Italian food written as the story of what peasants actually ate would make for a stodgy read. Many pages would be devoted to vegetable soup. There would be a substantial section on porridge. Bread made from inferior grains, and even from things like acorns in times of hardship, would need in-depth coverage. That is not the history to be reconstructed here. 

Another proverb, a favourite of mine, suggests that we need to look elsewhere for real history of Italian food. 'AI contadino non gli far sapere, quanto sia buono il cacio colle pere' - Don't tell the peasant how good cheese is with pears. In other words, don't give anyone any information if they are in a better position to take advantage of it than you are. Or: keep your recipe cards close to your chest. This cynical piece of wisdom can also be interpreted as a simple parable about the imbalance in power and knowledge that underlies Italy's oldest gastronomic traditions. It may have been the country folk who produced the cheese and pears, but the people with the power to appropriate those ingredients, and with the knowledge to transform them into a delicacy by a simple but artful combination, were the inhabitants of the cities. 

Italian food is city food. 

Italy has the richest tradition of urban living on the planet, and the enviable way in which Italians eat is part of that tradition. It is no coincidence that so many Italian products and dishes are named after cities: bistecca alia fiorentina, prosciutto di Parma, saltimbocca alia romana, pizza napoletana, risotto alia milanese, pesto genovese, pesto trapanese, olive ascolane, mostarda di Cremona ... From early in the second millennium, the hundred cities of Italy hogged the produce of the countryside and used it to build a rich food culture. For centuries, Italy's cities have been where all the things that go to create great cooking are concentrated: ingredients and culinary expertise, of course, but also power, wealth, markets and competition for social prestige. 

So, those urban pilgrims to the White Mill are not heading towards the traditional abode of Italian food: they are driving away from it. Italian food best expresses itself not in the farmhouse but in the urban market. The real adventure of Italian food is not to be found by trekking off into the Tuscan hills. The point is to roam the city streets savouring the cooking and sniffing out the stories.  

Delizia: The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food - John Dickie (Hodder & Stoughton; 2007)

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Parlando della pubblicità del Mulino Bianco, eccone alcuni spot. Il primo è del 1990 e vi appaiono i personaggi citati da Dickie ("Dad was a square-jawed journalist; Mum, a pretty but prim teacher; their children, Linda with curly hair and a bonnet, and Andrea in slacks and a tie, were as smart-but-casual as their parents; a marshmallow-eyed grandfather completed the group"). Il secondo, terzo, e quarto spot hanno come protagonisti, a parte i biscotti, l'Uomo del Mulino interpretato da Antonio Banderas, che è testimonial del Mulino Bianco dal 2012, insieme alla gallina Rosita. Il quinto filmato è una parodia degli spot interpretati da Antonio Banderas, da parte del simpaticissimo, bravissimo e a volte scurrilissimo comico italiano, Maurizio Crozza. Avvertenza: il filmato di Crozza contiene riferimenti a sfondo sensuale, anzi è tutto un susseguirsi di riferimenti a sfondo sessuale quindi potrebbe recare fastidio o addiritura offendere, quindi attenzione!       

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Ma prima di riprendere a parlare dell'isola d'Ischia, torniamo ancora più indietro nel tempo, all'epoca della colonizzazione greca in Occidente e alla Magna Grecia: 

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The Latin term “Magna Graecia” (in Greek, “Megálē Hellás”) means “Greater Greece.” In the term’s first attested usages, by Pindar and Euripides in the fifth century BCE, it applied to all of the territory inhabited by Greeks around the Mediterranean. While it has been suggested that “Megálē Hellás” was used as early as the fifth or fourth century to mean only the parts of modern Italy that were colonized by Greeks – the coasts of Sicily, Campania, Calabria, Basilicata, and Puglia – the texts which might have done so, by Antiochus of Syracuse and Pythagoras of Croton, are not preserved today. The earliest recorded use of the phrase to mean southern Italy and Sicily is thus Polybius (Histories 2.39) in the second century BCE, followed by Strabo (Geography 6.1.2) and, for the Latin version, Pliny the Elder (HN 3.95). Modern scholars tend to be even more restrictive in their usage, employing Magna Graecia to mean only peninsular Italy where it was settled by Greeks, in contrast to Sicily, which is often considered as a case by itself.

Sicily and Magna Graecia, Archeology of by Justin St. P. Walsh (2013) 

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Greek Colonization

In the first half of the first millennium BCE, Greek city-states, most of which were maritime powers, began to look beyond Greece for land and resources, and so they founded colonies across the Mediterranean. Trade contacts were usually the first steps in the colonization process and then, later, once local populations were subdued or included within the colony, cities were established. These could have varying degrees of contact with the homeland, but most became fully independent city-states, sometimes very Greek in character, in other cases culturally closer to the indigenous peoples they neighboured and included within their citizenry. One of the most important consequences of this process, in broad terms, was that the movement of goods, people, art, and ideas in this period spread the Greek way of life far and wide to Spain, France, Italy, the Adriatic, the Black Sea, and North Africa. In total then, the Greeks established some 500 colonies which involved up to 60,000 Greek citizen colonists, so that by 500 BCE these new territories would eventually account for 40% of all Greeks in the Hellenic World.

Trade & resource opportunities

The Greeks were great sea-farers, and travelling across the Mediterranean, they were eager to discover new lands and new opportunities. Even Greek mythology included such tales of exploration as Jason and his search for the Golden Fleece and that greatest of hero travellers Odysseus. First the islands around Greece were colonized, for example the first colony in the Adriatic was Corcyra (Corfu), founded by Corinth in 733 BCE (traditional date), and then prospectors looked further afield. The first colonists in a general sense were traders and those small groups of individuals who sought to tap into new resources and start a new life away from the increasingly competitive and over-crowded homeland.

Trade centres and free markets (emporia) were the forerunners of colonies proper. Then, from the mid-8th to mid-6th centuries BCE, the Greek city-states (poleis) and individual groups started to expand beyond Greece with more deliberate and longer-term intentions. However, the process of colonization was likely more gradual and organic than ancient sources would suggest. It is also difficult to determine the exact degree of colonization and integration with local populations. Some areas of the Mediterranean saw fully-Greek poleis established, while in other areas there were only trading posts composed of more temporary residents such as merchants and sailors. The very term 'colonization' infers the domination of indigenous peoples, a feeling of cultural superiority by the colonizers, and a specific cultural homeland which controls and drives the whole process. This was not necessarily the case in the ancient Greek world and, therefore, in this sense, Greek colonization was a very different process from, for example, the policies of certain European powers in the 19th and 20th centuries CE. It is perhaps here then, a process better described as 'culture contact' (De Angelis in Boyes-Stones et al, 51).

The establishment of colonies across the Mediterranean permitted the export of luxury goods such as fine Greek pottery, wine, oil, metalwork, and textiles, and the extraction of wealth from the land - timber, metals, and agriculture (notably grain, dried fish, and leather), for example - and they often became lucrative trading hubs and a source of slaves. A founding city (metropolis) might also set up a colony in order to establish a military presence in a particular region and so protect lucrative sea routes. Also, colonies could provide a vital bridge to inland trade opportunities. Some colonies even managed to rival the greatest founding cities; Syracuse, for example, eventually became the largest polis in the entire Greek world. Finally, it is important to note that the Greeks did not have the field to themselves, and rival civilizations also established colonies, especially the Etruscans and Phoenicians, and sometimes, inevitably, warfare broke out between these great powers.

Magna Graecia

Greek cities were soon attracted by the fertile land, natural resources, and good harbours of a 'New World' - southern Italy and Sicily. The Greek colonists eventually subdued the local population and stamped their identity on the region to such an extent that they called it 'Greater Greece' or Megalē Hellas, and it would become the most 'Greek' of all the colonized territories, both in terms of culture and the urban landscape with Doric temples being the most striking symbol of Hellenization. Some of the most important poleis in Italy were Cumae (the first Italian colony, founded c. 740 BCE by Chalcis), Naxos (734 BCE, Chalcis), Sybaris (c. 720 BCE, Achaean/Troezen), Croton (c. 710 BCE, Achaean), Tarentum (706 BCE, Sparta), Rhegium (c. 720 BCE, Chalcis), Elea (c. 540 BCE, Phocaea),  Thurri (c. 443 BCE, Athens), and Heraclea (433 BCE, Tarentum). On Sicily the main colonies included Syracuse (733 BCE, founded by Corinth), Gela (688 BCE, Rhodes and Crete), Selinous (c. 630 BCE), Himera (c. 630 BCE, Messana), and Akragas (c. 580 BCE, Gela).

The geographical location of these new colonies in the centre of the Mediterranean meant they could prosper as trade centres between the major cultures of the time: the Greek, Etruscan, and Phoenician civilizations. And prosper they did, so much so that writers told of the vast riches and extravagant lifestyles to be seen. Empedokles, for example, described the pampered citizens and fine temples of Akragas (Agrigento) in Sicily as follows; "the Akragantinians revel as if they must die tomorrow, and build as if they would live forever". Colonies even established off-shoot colonies and trading posts themselves and, in this way, spread Greek influence further afield, including higher up the Adriatic coast of Italy. Even North Africa saw colonies established, notably Cyrene by Thera in c. 630 BCE, and so it became clear that Greek colonists would not restrict themselves to Magna Graecia.

Mark Cartwright - Ancient History Encyclopedia (2014)

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Nell'articolo in alto, Mark Cartwright menziona i Fenici e gli Etruschi. Ma chi erano? Per spiegarcelo, ecco tre podcast del meraviglioso programma della BBC Radio 4, In Our Time, condotto dall'inimitabile Melvyn Bragg. Il primo podcast è dedicato ai Fenici; il secondo, all'alfabeto; il terzo, agli Etruschi. Potete ascoltare i podcast cliccando sulle schermate ["screenshots"] delle pagine dedicate ai tre programmi che vi porterà direttamente alle rispettive pagine del sito di In Our Time, oppure potete cliccare sui file audio ["audio files"] sotto le schermate. Segue un breve video, molto bello, di Tim Mostert, che illustra la storia dell'alfabeto e del ruolo fondamentale che i Fenici e gli antichi Greci ebbero nello sviluppo e nella diffusione dell'alfabeto che usiamo oggi.  

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Perché Greci, Fenici, Etruschi con l'iniziale maiuscola? Ecco la spiegazione tratta dalla rubrica 
Si dice o non si dice? del Corriere della Sera online:    

Per capire meglio il motivo per cui, a partire dall'inizio dell'VIII secolo a.C., molti Greci lasciarono la Grecia per fondare numerose colonie lungo le coste del Mediterraneo e del Mar Nero, ecco un bell'articolo, tratto dal numero di maggio 2015, di Focus Storia, seguito da un estratto del libro The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome dello storico inglese Robin Lane Fox, che ci spiegano il perché. Inoltre, vi proponiamo una bellissima puntata del programma della RAI, Ulisse, in cui Alberto Angela ci porta alla scoperta della Magna Grecia e della straordinaria civiltà degli antichi Greci.     

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Il bello dei migranti

A partire dall'VIII secolo a.C. genti elleniche attraversarono il mare e si stabilirono nell'Italia del Sud e in Sicilia. Dove seminarono la civiltà greca (facendosi spesso la guerra).

ll primo passo era una visita all'oracolo di Delfi, dove i sacerdoti di Apollo offrivano preziose indicazioni per scegliere la destinazione, Dopodiché, sotto la guida di un capo-spedizione, l'ecista ("fondatore"), gli uomini si imbarcavano speranzosi alla volta di quel "nuovo mondo" al di là del mare. Seguendo questo programma-base, a partire dall'VIII secolo a.C., molte poleis greche fondarono le loro colonie nelle regioni dell'Italia Meridionale (la "Grande Grecia" propriamente detta) e della Sicilia: insediamenti che conquisteranno la piena indipendenza dalla madrepatria e arriveranno a contare più abitanti della stessa Grecia. Dando vita a una civiltà che ha lasciato, a noi italiani, un'eredità unica al mondo. 

Ma perché quei Greci partirono? «All'inizio dell'VIII secolo a.C. la Grecia conobbe un rapido sviluppo economico che generò un'esponenziale crescita della popolazione: il territorio non bastava più a sfamare tutti, e così molti scelsero di emigrare verso la vicina penisola italiana», spiega lo storico dell'antichità Antonio Montesanti, autore di vari saggi sulla Magna Grecia, tra cui Terina: vitoria e leggenda (GB EditoriA).

Lo conferma tra l'altro il fatto che protagonisti della colonizzazione erano di solito le fasce più disagiate della popolazione, quelle che non potevano permettersi terre o bestiame e che in quei viaggi verso l'ignoto vedevano la chance di un futuro migliore. 

Le spedizioni erano composte da soli uomini, che spesso prendevano in moglie un'indigena. Erano agricoltori, allevatori e artigiani, più raramente mercanti o intellettuali. Ogni flotta contava di solito due o tre navi con a bordo poche centinaia di persone. Presenze obbligatorie erano un maestro d'ascia e un velaio, figure indispensabili per garantire una navigazione sicura. Una volta raggiunta l'area prescelta (il santuario di Delfi era una sorta di "ufficio viaggi" in cui confluivano informazioni da tutto il Mediterraneo), essa veniva trasformata in un distaccamento della metropoli (che, letteralmente, vuoI dire "città madre") di origine, della quale venivano ereditati tutti i riti e le festività. Non solo: in molti casi i coloni si fermavano in zone con paesaggi simili a quelli di casa. Quel che cambiava erano gli equilibri sociali: nelle colonie si ripartiva tutti da zero, i terreni erano divisi in modo equo e le doti personali decidevano le sorti di ognuno. > 

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Fra Tirreno e Ionio. I pionieri della colonizzazione greca in Italia salparono dall'isola di Eubea, nel Mar Egeo, e si fermarono attorno al 770 a.C. a Ischia. Qui è stata trovata una delle più antiche tracce della scrittura greca, incisa sulla cosiddetta Coppa di Nestore. Da lì sbarcarono poi sulla costa attorno a Napoli, a partire da Cuma. «Molto battute furono poi le coste ioniche, dove Greci del Peloponneso fondarono Crotone, Locri, Metaponto, Sibari e Taranto, l'unica colonia fondata ufficialmente da Spartani», prosegue l'esperto. «Le poleis magnogreche generarono in molti casi delle sub-colonie, creando un cosmo politico-culturale in cui sorse il concetto di Megàle Ellàs, espressione che apparve tra IV e II secolo a.C. con il significato di "Grande Grecia"; Magna per i Latini. La terminologia si estese poi a tutto il Sud dello Stivale, mentre la Sicilia era chiamata Trinacria ("tre punte", data la forma triangolare)». Qui, a partire da Naxos, sorsero importanti città-Stato come Agrigento, Messina, Selinute e Siracusa, le cui vicende storiche furono sempre connesse a quelle del resto del Meridione. 

Scienziati, artisti, campioni. Nelle città magnogreche, oltre a svilupparsi velocemente l'agricoltura, l'artigianato e i commerci (il loro grano si esportava verso i maggiori porti greci), si registrò da subito un notevole fervore culturale. I coloni edificarono biblioteche e scuole in cui si formarono i più grandi filosofi, letterati e scienziati del tempo. Il matematico Pitagora di Samo, per esempio, fondò a Crotone, attorno al 530 a.C., una scuola che divenne punto di riferimento anche per la Grecia. Decisivo fu il clima intellettuale che da Taranto, sotto il governo del 
filosofo e matematico Archita (428-360 a.C.), seguace di Pitagora, "contagiò" il resto del Sud Italia. Che attrasse come una calamita pensatori del calibro di Eschilo, Erodoto e Platone e che diede i natali a personaggi come Empedocle e Gorgia (nati in Sicilia), Parmenide e Zenone (nati in Campania). Per non parlare del siracusano Archimede (III secolo a.C.). Accanto alla scienza, fiorì l'arte, naturalmente di stampo ellenico: architettura (ovunque), pittura (insuperabile quella di Paestum), scultura in bronzo (soprattutto nella zona di Reggio Calabria) e ceramiche (a Taranto e altrove). Un "made in ltaly" che veniva esportato in tutto il Mediterraneo. 

«Le colonie della Magna Grecia furono attive persino sul piano sportivo», dice Montesanti. «Inviavano atleti ai giochi olimpici che si tenevano in Grecia, cogliendo spesso quell'occasione per mostrare la loro superiorità sulle metropoli d'origine». Italioti e sicelioti - rispettivamente i Greci stanziati nel Sud Italia e in Sicilia - collezionarono successi in tutte le competizioni. Milone di Crotone (VI secolo a.C.) è considerato il più grande lottatore di sempre. E da primato furono anche gli eserciti di queste città, che si sfidarono tra loro per l'egemonia sui mari, ma affrontarono anche flotte straniere e se la videro persino con i Greci della madrepatria. 

Potenti tiranni. In effetti, la Magna Grecia fu una terra piuttosto inquieta e litigiosa. Come in Grecia, governi democratici e tirannici si alternavano con una netta preferenza per i secondi, come dimostra la potente Siracusa. «Fondata attorno al 734 a.C. da coloni giunti da Corinto, Syrakousai divenne presto una megalopoli da oltre 300.000 abitanti, più del doppio di quelli attuali, e legò la propria ascesa al succedersi di una serie di tiranni tra cui spiccò Dionisio I (430-367 a.C.)», spiega lo storico. «Il tiranno fece circondare la città di imponenti fortificazioni ed estese i propri territori oltre la Sicilia, assicurandosi il controllo delle rotte tirreniche e adriatiche. Nel far ciò risolse tra l'altro le tensioni sociali presenti in città, inviando nelle nuove colonie coloro che non digerivano il suo regime e "importando" forze fresche dalle poleis conquistate». 
Siracusa sfidò più volte le città della cosiddetta Lega Italiota (guidata da Crotone) e durante il V secolo a.C. si batté a lungo contro i Cartaginesi, a volte alleandosi con Agrigento (Akragas). Non solo. Tra il 415 e il 413 a.C. i Siracusani umiliarono le forze di Atene, che avevano tentato un attacco alla città. 

A Taranto, invece, governava un'aristocrazia oligarchica di stampo spartano, specializzata nell'attività bellica. In Puglia, però, più che conquistare terre i Greci dovettero contenere gli indigeni: dagli Apuli ai Lucani, dai Campani ai Sanniti. 

Il segno tangibile della potenza della Magna Grecia furono le monete, battute in proprio dalle poleis, come Sibari, in Calabria, dove sorse la prima zecca, e Terina, l'odierna Lamezia Terme. Ma quella grandezza era destinata a cedere il passo al nuovo astro nascente della Storia: Roma. >

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Tramonto al rallentatore. «A fermare lo sviluppo della Magna Grecia, già messa sotto pressione dai cartaginesi, fu nel III secolo a.C. l'arrivo delle legioni romane, che sconfissero e soggiogarono una dopo l'altra le grandi poleis del Meridione cosi come i popoli italici presenti nell'area», avverte Montesanti. «Nel 272 a.C. fu piegata Taranto, mentre attorno al 212 a.C. cadde l'indomabile Siracusa, sottoposta a un lungo assedio durante il quale la difesa era coordinata dallo stesso Archimede». Secondo la leggenda, lo scienziato avrebbe utilizzato i suoi celebri "specchi ustori", in grado di convogliare i raggi solari contro le navi nemiche fino a infuocarle. I Romani ebbero comunque la meglio e anche per Syrakousai iniziò il declino. 

Quello della civiltà magnogreca fu in ogni caso un tramonto parziale. La sua profonda eredità culturale - e in parte genetica - passò sia alle popolazioni italiche, sia al mondo romano. Un esempio per tutti: dopo la caduta di Taranto giunse a Roma il letterato tarantino Livio Andronico, che tradurrà nella lingua dell'Urbe i versi dell'Odissea di Omero, gettando le basi della letteratura latina. 

Impatto ambientale. Persino il paesaggio, dopo l'arrivo dei Greci, non fu più lo stesso. Anzi, furono loro a modellarlo trasformandolo in "paesaggio mediterraneo", diffondendo gli ulivi (e l'olio). Ma non sempre l'impatto fu positivo. L'insediamento ionico di Metaponto, i cui resti archeologici si trovano oggi a centinaia di metri dalla costa, 2.500 anni fa era in riva del mare. Per soddisfare i crescenti bisogni alimentari della popolazione, i coloni disboscarono i terreni delle alture adiacenti trasformandoli in campi coltivati. Ma senza più alberi l'azione erosiva delle piogge innescò uno dei più antichi casi italiani di dissesto idrogeologico: i terreni franarono producendo l'avanzata della costa e l'impaludamento dell'area. 

«Al di là dell'impatto ambientale, italioti e sicelioti trasmisero importanti innovazioni nella costruzione degli edifici, nell'organizzazione delle città, nella lavorazione dei metalli e, soprattutto, nell'uso della scrittura alfabetica», precisa l'esperto. E il patrimonio che abbiamo ereditato dalla Magna Grecia, che a livello archeologico non ha nulla da invidiare al territorio greco, ha contribuito a fare dell'Italia uno dei luoghi più ricchi al mondo sotto il profilo artistico e architettonico. Benefici dell'immigrazione, che si sentono ancora, più di 2mila anni dopo. 

Matteo Liberti  - Focus Storia, Maggio 2015.

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Vi ricordiamo che, se volete acquistare la versione cartacea di Focus Storia o altre riviste italiane qui a Sydney, ne troverete una vasta selezione all'Haberfield Newsagency (139 Ramsay Street; a pochi metri dalla pasticceria Papa) dove potrete fare anche quattro chiacchere in italiano con il Signor Alfio. 

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Even in the 730s these overseas settlements were official ventures. The names of the Greek founders were remembered, not least because they continued to be celebrated in 'founders' festivals'. Religious rituals also accompanied the settlers' departures and arrivals. Before setting out, advice was sought from the Greek gods at one of their oracle-shrines, usually by asking if it was better and preferable to go or not: even if the venture went badly, participants would then know that the alternatives would have been worse. The most important source of advice was the god Apollo at Delphi, although the oracle there was a relatively recent cult in central Greece (no older than c. 800 BC). In Asia Minor, founding cities like Miletus turned to a nearer oracle, Apollo's shrine at Didyma, for similar encouragement. 

Founding poleis left a stamp on their foundations which is often very evident to us. Founders and settlers sometimes retained reciprocal citizenship in their original communities, but even when they did not, we can often infer the origins of the main founding citizenry without any founding-legend to help us. For the personal names chosen by the settlers, the particular calendar which they adopted in their settlement, their social customs, their religious cults all reflected their place of origin. They were not the random travellers and traders of the 'precolonial' age, and the reasons for formally sending them off abroad were seldom commercial. On arrival, Greek settlers sometimes drove out the nearby local residents, which was hardly the action of would-be traders. We sometimes hear, too, of the formal conscription of settlers in their home city and a ban (inappropriate for traders) on their returning home for several years. In one case, 'slingers out' were appointed to wait on the shore back in the founding polis: they had the memorable task of slinging stones at any settlers who tried to return home." 

Essentially, settlement overseas headed off potential trouble at home which might lead to a demand to adjust the unequal distribution of land. In the home polis, a small class of nobles owned much of the available land and received 'dues' from owners of the rest of it. In a new colony, some of the humbler Greek settlers could perhaps enjoy a greater measure of freedom and a sense of a juster existence than they ever knew at home. Around a settlement, there were often some poorly defended foreigners who could be subjected and used as forced labour: these locally available slaves may have eased the demands on some of the lower-class Greeks. A new settlement also offered the chance to plan and layout a site: some of the Greek settlements in south Italy and Sicily are our earliest evidence of Greek town planning. Temples, a regular 'gathering place' (agora), a shrine to the goddess Hearth and, in due course, spaces for exercise and athletics were among the hallmarks of a Greek settlement. In most of Sicily, south Italy and Libya, land for farming was definitely the settlers' aim and attraction. But by the later seventh century ever more Greeks had left to settle outposts on the Black Sea, especially on its hostile northern coast. Here, in un-Greek weather and conditions, they probably had an eye on access to local resources, including the readily exportable grain of the Crimea. Access by rivers. to the interior was surely important, too, not least for the Greek settlements on the southern coast of France (c. 600-550 BC), including Massilia (modem Marseilles) which was not far from the mouth of the river Rhone. Further west on the coast of Spain, one new Greek settlement was openly called 'Trading Place' (Emporion, whence the modern name Ampurias). In Egypt, some of the visiting Greeks chose to settle in the Nile Delta, in a polis called Naucratis given to them by the reigning Pharaoh, c. 570 BC, who did not want them dispersed through his land. There were other Greeks who went to and fro, exchanging goods for Egypt's assets, including its grain and the soda used for washing clothes.  

Some 'mother-cities' like Corinth or Miletus were prolific founders, and it surely did not escape their ruling class that selected areas were best settled with their own people or potential allies, not least so as to ensure local trade-routes and access to the sources of valuable local assets. What is impressive everywhere is the adaptability of the Greek settlers. Unlike the impractical British 'gendemen' who settled at Jamestown on the American coast or the bickering Spaniards left by Columbus on Hispaniola, all Greeks buckled down and made a practical success, commoners and aristocrats together, like Homer's hero Odysseus and his crew. No settlement is known to have failed through incompetence. 

One obvious consequence of these settlements was the spread of the Greek language and Greek literacy. The Greek alphabet actually owed its origin to Greek travel overseas: it was derived from a Greek's close study of the neighbouring Phoenicians' script in the Near East, probably c. 800-780 BC. Its inventor was one of the Euboean travellers to Cyprus, Crete or north Syria. This alphabet was then adapted by the non-Greek Phrygians in Asia and by Etruscans in Italy and used to write their own languages. As Greeks travelled with it, the result was a vastly increased spread of reading, writing and speaking Greek around the Mediterranean. Many centuries later, Hadrian was to be its beneficiary on his travels. 

The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome - Robin Lane Fox (Penguin; 2006)

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Ma cosa c'entrano gli antichi Greci e la Magna Grecia con Ischia? Nell'VIII secolo a.C., coloni dell'isola di Eubea, in Grecia, crearono il primo insediamento greco stabile del Mediterraneo Occidentale proprio ad Ischia, a cui diedero il nome di Pithecusae. Ecco cosa ci dice a proposito di Pithecusae lo storico inglese David Abulafia in The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean: 

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The opening of contact between the Greeks of the Aegean (specifically, Euboia) and the lands facing the Tyrrhenian Sea has enthusiastically been described as a moment 'of greater lasting significance for western civilisation than almost any other single advance achieved in antiquity'. It was an important moment not just for the Italian lands into which the first Greek traders and settlers penetrated, but for the lands back home which flourished as centres of trade: after the eclipse of the Euboian cities, Corinth came to dominate this traffic, sending its fine vases westwards in their thousands, and bringing back raw materials such as metals and foodstuffs; and after Corinth, Athens acquired a similarly dominant role in the fifth century. It was these outside resources and contacts that enabled the Greek lands to experience their great Renaissance after the collapse of Bronze Age civilization, and to disseminate objects in the distinctive styles favoured by Greek craftsmen and artists, with the result that the art of the Greeks became the point of reference for native artists among the Iberians and Etruscans in the far west. To write the history of Greek civilization as the story of the rise of Athens and Sparta without much reference to the waters of the central and western Mediterranean is like writing the history of the Italian Renaissance as if it all happened in Florence and Venice. 

The first contact between Greeks and the Bay of Naples dates back to Mycenaean times, to judge from pottery finds on the island of Vivara. The Euboians established a base on the neighbouring island of Ischia around 750 BC. There is no sign that they were consciously following in the footsteps of their Bronze Age precursors; all the same, there is something strange about the fact that the first Greek settlement in Iron Age Italy lay so deeply within the Tyrrhenian Sea. A mainland settlement soon followed at Kyma (Cumae) in the same great bay. A half-century later the Spartans founded a colony at Taras (Taranto) in the heel of Italy, within easy sailing distance of the Ionian islands and the Gulf of Corinth, and this seems a much more logical location for a first, tentative implantation on Italian soil. Still, the Phoenicians had reputedly been sailing to North Africa and out beyond Gibraltar to Tartessos even before this time. These long, ambitious routes found their rationale in the search for metals, whether the copper and iron of Tuscany and Sardinia or the silver of Sardinia and southern Spain. A late Greek account of the Phoenician voyages to Tartessos expressed wonder at the wealth that could be found in the far west, telling how these merchants took oil westwards and then returned with 'so great a quantity of silver that they were no longer able to keep or receive it, but were forced when sailing away from those parts to make of silver not only all the articles which they need, but also their anchors'. And it will be seen that there is enough evidence of friendly contact between Greeks and Phoenicians in these waters to suggest that the opening of these sea routes was to some degree a joint enterprise, even if the major settlements, such as Carthage and Kyma, acquired a distinctive ethnic identity (in the case of the Greek cities not as Greek, but as Euboian, Dorian or Ionian). 

There is a mystery at both ends of the route linking Euboia to Ischia. Why Euboia should have emerged as the first significant centre of overseas trade and settlement after the long recession of the 'Dark Age' is far from clear. Euboia is a long, well-wooded island that flanks mainland Greece; the distance from the mainland is only a few miles at most, though Hesiod described his unreasonable terror at crossing even that narrow channel. The most likely explanation is that its two major cities, Chalkis and Eretria, commanded excellent natural resources and began to exploit them in local trade down to Athens and Corinth. Euboia was rich in timber, essential for its shipbuilders; indeed, one of the Homeric Hymns - a series of poems in praise of the gods written in the seventh or sixth century in what passes for a Homeric style - dedicated to Apollo, described it as 'famous for its ships'. Wine was another resource the early Greek word woinos was transmitted to Italy, where the Etruscans transformed it into a word the Romans heard as vinum. The name of one of its towns, Chalkis, suggests that the area was a source of copper (khalkon), and moulds for the casting of tripod legs, found at Lefkandi on Euboia, date from the late tenth century BC. Lefkandi was then a flourishing centre. A substantial building, with an apse at its end, has been excavated there; measuring 45 metres by 10 metres, it dates from before 950 BC, and was constructed out of mudbrick on stone foundations, while its roof was made of thatch. It was the mausoleum of a great warrior, who was found wrapped in a linen cloak of which fragments still survive, along with his iron sword and spear, and he had been accompanied to the next world by three horses. A woman was also buried within the building, along with gold jewellery and pins made of bronze and iron. 

The Euboians did not pour all their efforts into Ischia. Indeed, their aim was to make Chalkis and Eretria into mid-points between the trading networks of the western and the eastern Mediterranean. As early as the late eleventh century ceramics reached Lefkandi from the Syrian coast; ties to Syria were strengthened with the establishment of a trading counter at al-Mina around 825 BC. This site was excavated before the Second World War by Sir Leonard Woolley, who clearly demonstrated its importance as a centre of trade and industry looking out in all directions of the compass - towards the thriving empire of the Assyrians in the east, down the coast to Tyre and Sidon, but also across the open sea to the lands of Yavan, 'Ionia', the Greeks. Closer still were the ties with Cyprus, which gave access to the towns of Syria, southern Anatolia and the Nile Delta. It was a place where all the cultures of the seaboard met; the Phoenician colony at Kition coexisted comfortably enough with the Greek settlers and merchants. Sites in Euboia have also yielded a bronze mace-head from Cyprus, and goods made of gold, faience, amber and rock crystal originating in Egypt or the Levant. The fragments of fine cloth in the warrior's grave at Lefkandi indicate that high-quality textiles were another attraction; the reputation of the Syrian coast as a source of cloths and dyestuffs drew Greek eyes towards the Levant. All this made Euboia into the most prosperous part of the Greek world in the ninth century, apart from partly Hellenized Cyprus. Less clear is who brought these goods to Euboia. The boom there began before Chalkidian and Eretrian sailors established their settlement in Ischia, in the eighth century. Probably the merchants who arrived from Cyprus and the Levant were not Greeks at all, but Phoenicians; and this would account for the knowledge of Phoenician traders and of their sharp techniques among the earliest Greek poets. 

The other mystery is what the Euboians were able to obtain in exchange for the goods they acquired from Cyprus and the Levant. As they opened up the routes to the west, they gained access to supplies of metals such as copper and iron, for local resources had apparently become inadequate to meet the excited demand among Euboians for oriental goods. Mostly, however, they met their obligations with items that leave no clear record in the soil: sacks of grain, amphorae filled with wine and oil, stoppered jars containing perfumes. When their pottery reached places as distant as the kingdom of Israel or Cilicia, in southern Anatolia, it may well have been appreciated for its design, but what mattered most were the contents. And then, as this commerce became regular, the strains of paying for more and more eastern luxuries stimulated further searches for metals and other goods that could be used in payment; and this brought the Euboians to the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. There was direct or indirect contact with Sardinia, documented in finds of pottery of Euboian origin, or at least in the Euboian style. Better still were the resources in iron of the Tuscan shores and hinterland, a region of prosperous villages which were about to coalesce into the rich city-based culture of the Etruscans. So, gradually at first, the Euboians began to make contact with the lands surrounding the Tyrrhenian Sea, first by way of Phoenician mediators, and then in their own ships. 

Ischia was the base the Euboians chose, and they oddly called it Pithekoussai, 'the place of the monkeys'; one of the island's attractions was its vineyards, and another was its safe offshore location - it was a point from which Euboian traders could radiate outwards in search of the produce of southern and central Italy and the Italian islands. Between about 750 and 700 BC there existed a flourishing commercial and industrial base at the site now known as Lacco Ameno, and two extraordinary finds there illuminate the links between this far-flung settlement and the Greek world. One is a drinking-cup, made in Rhodes, and deposited in the grave of a boy who died when he was only about ten years old. After its manufacture the cup was decorated with a lighthearted inscription: 


Nestor had a fine drinking-cup, but anyone who drinks from this cup will soon be struck with desire for fair-crowned Aphrodite.    


Nestor's cup, the Odyssey relates, was made of gold, but the wine poured into it acquired a potency that gold alone could not confer. There are many striking features of this inscription. It is written in the version of the Greek alphabet favoured by the inhabitants of Chalkis, supporting the argument that the inscription was not made along with the cup itself in Rhodes, but added by Euboian Greeks, who had learned the alphabet from Phoenician visitors to Euboia. It was the Euboians who carried the alphabet westwards to the peoples of Italy, and it was therefore their version (rather than the Attic version that came to triumph in the Greek world) that gave birth to the Etruscan alphabet, and, derived from that, the Roman one. These hexameter lines are the only eighth-century verses to have survived outside the Homeric canon. With their reference to Nestor, they offer further evidence of the central role of the Trojan War in the life and thought of the archaic Greeks. The link to Rhodes, whether directly or by way of Chalkis and Eretria, is confirmed by the discovery on Ischia of a good many aryballoi, small perfume jars, of Rhodian manufacture, discarded at the cemetery after being emptied during funerary rites. 

The second remarkable find from Lacco Ameno is a shallow vase or krater that depicts on its rim a shipwreck. This too is the first object of its type, the first figured narrative painting to survive from an Italian site; and it was made locally. A ship, similar to those later depicted on Corinthian pottery, has capsized and its sailors are in the sea swimming for their lives, but one of them has drowned and another is about to be swallowed by an enormous fish. Since a further image shows a well-fed fish standing upright on its tail he seems not to have escaped. There is nothing here that is recognizable in the Odyssey or other tales of returning heroes; the story could be a local and very familiar one, about real men who went to sea and never returned. Other evidence from graves also testifies to the importance of sea traffic to the inhabitants of Pithekoussai. Some vases came south from Etruria, in the plain black style known as bucchero; it was their shape rather than their decoration that gave them elegance. Links to the east were particularly lively; about a third of the graves dating from the third quarter of the eighth century contained items of Levantine origin or produced under Levantine influence. A scarab amulet found in a child's grave carries the name of Pharaoh Bocchoris, which provides a date somewhere around 720 BC, and there is a faience vase from the Etruscan site at Tarquinia which also mentions this Pharaoh, so we can deduce that traffic was moving from Egypt, probably via Phoenicia or the settlement at al-Mina in Syria, to Greece and then into the Tyrrhenian Sea; Pithekoussai was not by any means the end of the line, for merchants pressed on until they had arrived on the metal rich Tuscan shore. Just as the Phoenicians overseas eventually became busier traders than the Phoenicians of the Levant, so too the Euboians in the far west built up their own lively trading world linking Syria, Rhodes, Ionia and eventually Corinth to Pithekoussai. 

The people of Pithekoussai were traders, but they were also craftsmen and craftswomen. One fragment of iron slag is probably of Elban origin, underlining the importance of the link to Etruria, since Ischia could offer no metals. Crucibles have been found, and it is clear from the survival of small lengths of wire and of ingots that bronze goods as well as iron ones were manufactured. This was a hard-working community of expatriates, numbering, according to the best estimates, between 4,800 and 9,800 people in the late eighth century. What had been founded as a trading-post thus developed into a sizeable town, in which not just Greeks but some Phoenicians and mainland Italians made their home. A jar containing the remains of an infant carries what seems to be a Phoenician symbol. Just because Pithekoussai was a Greek foundation we should not assume it was inhabited only by Greeks, or specifically Euboians. Foreign craftsmen were welcome if they could bring their styles and techniques with them, whether they were Corinthian potters, who began to settle in nearby Kyma by about 725 BC, or Phoenician carvers, who could satisfy the craving of the Italian peoples for oriental goods. Pithekoussai thus became the channel through which 'orientalizing' styles were funnelled through to the west. The Pithekoussans observed how hungry the growing village communities of southern Etruria, in places such as Veii, Caere and Tarquinia, were for eastern goods, and they sold the early Etruscans what they wanted, in exchange for the metals of northern Etruria. Whether they noticed a collection of villages grouped around seven hills, across the river Tiber just to the south of Etruria, is less certain.
  
The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean - David Abulafia (Allen Lane; 2011)

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Lo storico inglese, Robin Lane Fox, che ho citato prima, ha dedicato anche un bel libro agli Eubei ed ai loro viaggi nel Mediterraneo, Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer (Allen Lane; 2008), in cui dedica alcune pagine a Pithecusae. Ma, anziché riportare le pagine del libro dedicate a Pithecusae qui, voglio proporvi il bellissimo documentario basato sul libro e presentato dall'autore stesso: Greek Myths: Tales of Travelling Heroes. Il documentario è lungo, e bisogna seguirlo con attenzione, mane vale la pena perché è assolutamente affascinante! Quindi, in basso, troverete prima il segmento del documentario in cui lo storico si reca ad Ischia, seguito dal documentario per intero.

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Come Robin Lane Fox menziona nel documentario sopra, gli oggetti rinvenuti nella necropoli di Pithecusae, tra cui appunto la cosiddetta Coppa di Nestore, sono conservati, dal 1999, nel Museo Archeologico di Pithecusae che ha sede in Villa Arbusto, la villa che appartenne al famoso magnate dell'editoria italiana, Angelo Rizzoli. Ecco, in basso, l'articolo bellissimo di Sergio Frau apparso ne la Repubblica del 17 aprile 1999 dedicato all'apertura del museo e al contributo inestimabile dell'archeologo tedesco Giorgio Buchner alla "riscoperta" di Pithecusae.     

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I greci all' assalto di Ischia: Da oggi un nuovo Museo

Lacco Ameno (Ischia) 
Nell' VIII secolo avanti Cristo - ormai è certo - dalla Grecia vi arrivarono gli Eubei, grandi mercanti. Vi portarono la scrittura, tecniche per lavorare i metalli, mille vasi decorati con le loro geometrie... Vi lasciarono, affollate necropoli e villaggi intatti sotto il fango. 

Nella metà del XX secolo dopo Cristo, da Milano vi sbarcò Angelo Rizzoli, editore e produttore, un self made man alla meneghina che è ancora un mito. Vi portò Maria Callas, Liz Taylor, Walter Chiari, ma anche Pietro Nenni, Giovanni Gronchi, Fanfani, Mina... Vi lasciò due maxialberghi, un eliporto, un ospedale battezzato con il nome di sua moglie, Anna. 

Ora, per uno di quegli scherzi che solo il caso sa fare, le due storie si fondono per sempre: oggi, infatti, Villa Arbusto, la bella costruzione settecentesca acquistata negli anni '50 da Rizzoli, diventa il Museo Archeologico dell'Isola d'Ischia. E il suo parco delle feste vista-mare, restaurato, sarà in parte passeggiata per chi viene a vedere la collezione di antichità esposte, e in parte laboratorio di scavo all'aperto per altra roba grossa che hanno trovato qui sotto, facendo altri lavori. Così quello che era stato definito il Museo che non c'è - visto che se ne parlava già dal 1977, e che il catalogo era già pronto e stampato nel 1994 - finalmente ora c'è. E c'è anche chi 
l'ha già battezzato Museo Buchner. E in realtà, Giorgio Buchner, se lo meriterebbe proprio: dei mille pezzi che il nuovo museo presenta, 998 li ha scavati lui, negli ultimi 47 anni. 

Strano, fascinoso, personaggio questo ischitano nato in Baviera. Qui a Ischia ha catalogato più di 700 tombe; descritto con minuzia migliaia di reperti. Li ha fotografati all'alba, solo in quei momenti quando le luci erano giuste per la sua Hasselblad. È preciso su tutto, minuzioso, dettagliato, serissimo. Persino quando ti si presenta - subito dopo la stretta di mano e un Buongiorno ancora tedesco, dopo più di 50 anni di vita ischitana - ti appioppa cinque fogli scritti a mano in bell' ordine in cui - dopo la prima riga in cui scrive "Giorgio Buchner. Monaco di Baviera 8/8/1914 - Ischia .....?" - stipa ben ordinate per date non solo la sua di vita ma anche quella del padre, lo zoologo Paul B. Buchner, il primo in famiglia ad avere nel 1909 un colpo di fulmine per quest' isola dove poi, nel '30, riuscì a costruirsi una bella casa. 

Doveva fare lo zoologo anche lui. Poi, d'improvviso, nel '27, quelle righe di Julius Beloch, scritte nel 1890 e lette su un libro appena acquistato dal padre, da cui viene a sapere che il promontorio del Monte Vico che sovrasta Lacco Ameno era pieno di cocci, e che giù, nella Valle di San Montano lì sotto, erano state trovate delle sepolture del V secolo, e che già Tito Livio raccontava che i Greci dell'Eubea, prima ancora di fondare Cuma si erano stabiliti nell' isola... 

Racconta Buchner: "Il Beloch chiudeva quel passo con la speranza che nuovi ritrovamenti confermassero le asserzioni di Livio. La sentii come un impegno. Ero ancora al liceo: capii, però, che l' archeologia sarebbe stata la mia vita". Studi a Breslavia, a Lipsia, poi via da Hitler con la cittadinanza italiana, la laurea a Roma nel '38 con una tesi che già racchiudeva il Dna dell' intera sua esistenza: Vita e dimora umana nelle Isole Flegree dalla preistoria ai tempi romani. Ovvero quel che - 61 anni dopo - racconta ora il Museo di Villa Arbusto. Solo che allora, quando lui la scrisse, c'era poco o niente a dar ragione a Tito Livio... Erano anni, quelli, in cui i grandi dell'archeologia di qui, tutti presi dai portenti di Pompei ed Ercolano e Paestum, Ischia - la Pithecusa degli antichi - la snobbavano un po'. Al massimo le concedevano di esser stata uno scalo, ma certo non una colonia... Figurarsi, poi, se potevano ammettere che, per di più, fosse la prima delle colonie greche in Italia, la trisnonna della Magna Grecia... E invece, pezzo su pezzo, Buchner che nel '49 riuscì a farsi assumere alla Soprintendenza con delega su Ischia - scavando ogni anno che ha potuto, da aprile a giugno - è riuscito a dimostrarlo. 

Ed eccoli, ora, in vetrina i tesori di tutti quei suoi scavi fatti con Giosuè e Peppiniello, assistenti ormai ottantenni anche loro - invitati d'onore all'inaugurazione di oggi - a raccontare mille anni di Ischia da quel 730 a.C. alla Roma trionfante fin qui, con i suoi marmi scolpiti per sdebitarsi dalle grazie ricevute dalle acque termali dell' isola. Angelo Rizzoli aveva visto giusto: il posto che ora è museo è talmente bello che dentro si sono potuti permettere un allestimento serio, al servizio dei pezzi che deve presentare, con tanto di didascalie e schede di spiegazione. (Niente a che vedere con il bailamme - un post moderno un po' arruffato, impaginato come i tabloid popolari inglesi - appena messo in piedi a Napoli per la mostra pompeiana "Homo Faber" dove splendidi mosaici, affreschi delicatissimi, sculture stupefacenti, per essere guardati con l' attenzione che meritano devono fare a gara - e vincere - con una selva di computer, e video, e fotoriproduzioni, e scritte di ogni dimensione, e macchinari appena ricostruiti. E male, perdipiù: c'è un mulino che, a ogni giro, spande acqua dappertutto tranne dove dovrebbe, facendo fare una pessima figura agli innocenti pompeiani che certo sapevano costruirlo e farlo funzionare per bene.). 

Vetrina dopo vetrina, nel museo, attraverso la roba delle tombe resuscita la vita di quei greci avventurosi che si spinsero qua. Si vede - dalle mille forme dei vasi, dai loro decori - che gli Eubei finalmente arrivano, ma senza donne: tra gli spilloni ritrovati, infatti, non ce n'è neppure uno del tipo che le signore dell' Eubea portavano all' epoca di quelle prime scorribande d'emigrazione. Spiega Costanza Gialanella, direttore archeologico per l'isola, che con Buchner fa tandem ormai da una ventina d'anni avendoci scavato da studentessa e avendone poi preso il posto: "Deve essere andata come succedeva allora: gli Eubei sbarcano, fanno fuori i maschi indigeni, fanno loro le donne, adottano i piccoli. E si crea così la nuova società: mercanti, pescatori, fabbri, vasai...". Quante storie questi pezzi in mostra si portano dietro... Piccoli tesori per chi sa guardarli, solo cocci per chi non lo sa fare. Angelone Rizzoli, ad esempio... "Un anno, negli anni '50, Rizzoli si interessò al mio lavoro", racconta Buchner. "Gli spiegai le mie ipotesi, le mie ricerche. Ci misi tanta di quella passione che finì per darmi un milione di allora per i miei scavi. Salutandomi preannunciò: "Vedremo tra un anno cos'ha trovato". Quando tornò gli mostrai felice i nuovi vasi, le sculturine di terracotta... Non disse una parola. Non l' ho più visto". 

Scrutando le vetrine, c'è chi stupirà di quanto poco, tutto sommato, sia cambiato da allora: c'è persino una vetrina con delle rondelle di argilla per giocarci come boccette, passatempo andato avanti finora da queste parti. O di quanto intensi fossero allora i corti circuiti tra culture e religioni del Mediterraneo: in molte tombe - insieme a brocche e coppe per bere nell'aldilà - sono stati trovati degli scarabei egizi a benedire la nuova vita dopo la morte. Uno è eccezionale: vi è inciso il nome di Bokchoris, un faraone morto nel 712, che così dà una data a tutto. E poi i lingotti di piombo, la roba da pesca, i pesi per il telaio, gli strumenti del lavoro... C' è anche chi - come il parterre dei re dell' archeologia internazionale che è appena arrivato qui, da Londra, Berlino, Parigi, per l' inaugurazione - si emozionerà soprattutto davanti alla Coppa di Nestore, un tesoretto d' argilla alto una decina di centimetri, datato 725 a.C.. è la supestar del museo: sono oltre cento i titoli ad essa dedicati da quando fu trovata - da Buchner, ovviamente - in una ricca tomba a cremazione. Tutta la sua importanza è racchiusa in quelle tre righette spennellate da destra a sinistra - secondo un alfabeto greco ma ancora mezzo fenicio - che recitano: "...Di Nestore la coppa buona a bersi. Ma chi beva da questa coppa, subito quello sarà preso dal desiderio d' amore per Afrodite dalla bella corona...". Un vero portento per chi conosce bene Omero e quella scena, e che la ritrova - citata con altre parole - in questa che è la prima scritta greca in Italia. Tanti pubblici, diversi tra loro, ma tutti insieme qui, a festeggiare Buchner, il grande vecchio che ce l' ha fatta. E che sogna nuove vittorie, come trovare, prima o poi, le tombe degli antichi principi di Pithecusa: "Da qualche parte devono pur esserci, ne sono certo". A rendergli omaggio non ci sarà il ministro dei Beni culturali: e sì che sarebbe spettato a Giovanna Melandri - lo Stato - dire "Bravo! E grazie" non solo a Buchner, ma anche a Lacco, un comune piccolo piccolo che azzarda, a spese sue, la scommessa su cultura e memoria.

di Sergio Frau; La Reubblica 17 aprile, 1999 

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Un'altro libro assolutamente bellissimo che dedica alcune pagine memorabili a Pithecusae, o meglio, a due oggetti in particolare conservati nel Museo Archeologico di Pithecusae, è The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters di Adam Nicolson. I due oggetti presi in esame sono la Coppa di Nestore e il Cratere con scena di naufragio e la loro descrizione da parte di Nicolson è carica di emozione. Il libro è talmente bello che, dopo l'estratto dedicato a Pithecusae, ho incluso anche il link alla recensione del libro di Charlotte Higgins, apparso in The Guardian, e due interviste all'autore, in podcast: la prima di Geraldine Doogue; la seconda di Michael Enright. Infine troverete la terza delle sei puntate di un bellissimo documentario televisivo della BBC del 1985, In Search of the Trojan War, presentato da Michael Wood che prende in esame il ruolo degli aedi (cantori professionisti) nella composione dell'Iliade.

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In a way that remains permanendy and inevitably uncertain, the Phoenician alphabet arrived in the Greek world, probably in the ninth century BC, from the trading ports of the Near East. Powerful currents were running between the Near East and the Aegean. Craftsmen, foods, spices, herbs, precious metals, ways of working that metal, myths, metaphysical ideas, poetry, stories - all were flooding in from the east, and the alphabet came with them. Unlike the earlier complex scripts, the simple Phoenician alphabet wasn't confined to high-class scribes, and the Greeks soon adapted it to their own use, adapting Phoenician letters for vowels and for 'ph-', 'ch-' and 'ps-', which do not occur in Phoenician. Like the songs of Homer themselves, the Greek scripts they developed varied from place to place, but of all the scraps and fragments of early Greek text that have survived from the eighth century none is more suddenly illuminating than a small reconstructed object from the island of Ischia, at the far, western end of the Greek-speaking world, guarding the northern entrance to the bay of Naples. 

Ischia now is a dream of wellbeing, a sharply dressed salad of an island, rising to a high volcanic peak in Mount Epomeo, rimmed in lidos and those in search of rheumatic cures, but with a lush greenness which must have seemed to any Aegean sailor like an oasis of welcome; It is a version of Calypso's island, balmIy, seductive, inviting, somehow suspended from mundane realities. The sun comes up over the shoulder of Vesuvius on the mainland and lights the lemon trees and the figs. Mounds of bougainvillea and ipomoea clump and tumble down the hillsides. A milky haze hangs all morning over an almost motionless sea. Bees hum in the rosemary flowers and crickets tick over in the grass. 

Ischia offered the early Iron Age Greeks more than exquisite comfort. When the first settlers came here in about 770 BC from the Aegean island of Euboea, they set up the earliest, most northern and most distant of all Greek colonies in Italy. They chose it because the northern tip of the island provides the perfect recipe for a defensible trading post: a high, sheer-walled acropolis, Monte Vico, with sheltered bays on each side, one protected from all except northerlies, the other open only to the east. Between the two a shallow saddle is rich in deep volcanic soils where a few vine and fruit trees still grow among the pine-umbrellaed villas and the swimming pools. Here, beginning in the early 1950s, the archaeologist Giorgio Buchner excavated about five hundred eighth- and seventh-century BC graves which reveal the lives of people for whom the Homeric poems were an everyday reality. 

This little Greek stone town was called Pithekoussai, Ape-island, perhaps from the monkeys they found here on arrival, or more interestingly as a name suitable for people who were seen from the mainland as vulgar and adventurous traders, laden with cash, irreverent and with uncertain morals, enriching themselves on the edge of the known world (pithekizo meant 'to monkey about'). It was an astonishing and wonderful melting pot, four thousand people living here by 700 BC, nothing halfhearted about it, nor apparently militaristic. People from mainland Italy, speaking a kind of Italic, were living here, with Phoenicians from Tyre and Sidon, Byblos and Carthage, Aramaeans from modern Syria and Greeks. The archaeologists found no ethnic zoning in the cemetery. All were living together and dying together, buried side by side. There was little apparent in the way of ethnic gap between these people. It was a deeply mixed world. Iron with the chemical signatures of Elba and mainland Tuscany was worked here in the blacksmiths' quarter and sold on to clients in the Near East. Trade linked the island with Apulia, Calabria, Sardinia, Etruria and Latium as well as the opposite Campania shore. No other Greek site in Italy has objects from such a vast stretch of the Iron Age Mediterranean. 

Buchner found no hint in any of the graves of a warrior aristocracy. The only blades were a few iron knives, awls and chisels. The leading members of the Pithekoussai world were from a commercial middle class, some with small workshops for iron and bronze, many with slaves of their own. The style of burial marks the difference between those classes: the slaves hunched foetally in small and shallow hollows, no possessions beside them; their masters, mistresses and their children laid out supine, in plain and dignified style, accompanied by simple but beautiful grave goods. 

Much of their pottery came from Corinth and Rhodes, and what they didn't import, they copied. Small Egyptian scarabs were often worn as amulets by the children and went to their graves with them, along with stone seals from northern Syria and one or two Egyptian faience beads. There are some fine red pots made in the Phoenician city of Carthage on the North African coast, and silver pins and rings from Egypt. A tomb of a young woman buried in about 700 BC was found with her body surrounded by little dishes from Corinth and small ointment jars, seventeen of them, around her, a dressing-table-full. Men also had little fat-bellied oil jars with them, some no more than an inch high and an inch across, pocket offerings, maybe used in the funeral rites. A fisherman was buried with his line and net; only the bronze fish hook and the folded-over lead weights of the net have survived. These men were all buried in the way of Homeric heroes, their bodies cremated on wooden pyres, and then interred with the charred wood and their possessions beneath small tumuli. 

Nothing is coarse or gross. Big-eyed sea snakes and fluent, freely-drawn fish decorate the grey-and-ochre pottery. There are flat-footed wine jugs, suitable for a shipboard table. There is one big dish decorated with a chariot wheel, perhaps another faint heroic memory. Some pots are decorated with griffins from patterns that had their distant origins in Mesopotamia, others with swastikas that probably originated just as long ago in the Proto-Indo-European cultures of the Caspian steppe. 

Fusion and mixture, a kind of mental mobility, is the identifying mark of this little city. It was not a luxury civilisation, but as you spend a morning walking around the empty, cool marble halls of the Pithekoussai Museum in the Villa Arbusto, peering in at the pots, you can feel the stirring of life in this distant and adventurous place 2,700 years ago. It doesn't take much to see the wine being mixed in these bowls, poured from these jugs or drunk from these cups, nor the glittering fish hauled up in these nets or the goods loaded on distant quays and beaches and sold from here to curious buyers on the mainland of Italy. 

And the museum holds its surprises. One late-eighth-century crater originally made in Attica, a bowl for mixing wine and water, depicts this world in trouble. 

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On its grey and rapidly painted body, a ship floats all wrong in the sea, turned over in a gale, its curved hull now awash, its prow and stern pointing down to the seabed. Everything has fallen out. Wide-shouldered and huge-haunched men are adrift in the ocean beneath, their hair ragged, their arms flailing for shore and safety. Striped and cross-hatched fish, some as big as the men, others looking on, swim effortlessly in the chaos. A scattering of little swastikas does little to sanctify this fear-filled waterworld. One man's head is disappearing into the mouth of the biggest fish of all. It is a disaster, fuelled by the fear the Greeks had of the creatures of the sea, alien animals which, as Achilles taunts one of his victims, 'will lick the blood from your wounds and nibble at your gleaming fat'. The scene is no new invention; it is painted with all the rapidity and ease of having been painted many times before. 

There is no need to attach the name of Odysseus to this; nor of Jonah, the Hebrew prophet swallowed by a fish, his story exactly contemporary with this pot. It is merely the story of life on the Iron Age seas, the reality of shipwreck, the terror of the sea as a closing-over element filled with voracious monsters. In a later, Western picture, the large-scale catastrophe of the ship itself would have been the focus. Here it is pushed to the outer margin and made almost irrelevant; the central characters are the men, their hair and limbs out of order, the experience of human suffering uppermost. In that way, this is a picture from the Homeric mind. 

Then, in a room hidden deep in the museum, you find the other transforming dimension of Pithekoussai: these people wrote. Shards from the eighth century BC are marked or painted with tiny fragments of Greek. One has the name 'Teison', perhaps the cup's owner. A second, on a little fragment of a cup, says 'eupoteros' - meaning 'better to drink from'. A third, also in Greek, written like the others with the letters reading from right to left as they are in Phoenician, and with no gaps between the words, says, fragmentarily, ' ... m' epoies[e]'. The verb poieo has the same root as 'poetry', and the inscription means 'someone whose name ended in -inos made me' - Kallinos, Krokinos, Minos, Phalinos, Pratinos? This is no scratched graffito, but painted as part of the Geometric design. It is another first: the oldest artist's signature in Europe. 

By 750 BC at the latest, writing had seeped into all parts of this expanding, connecting, commercial, polyglot world. Pithekoussai is not unique. Eighth-century inscriptions, many of them chatty, everyday remarks, with no claim to special or revered significance, have survived from all over the Aegean and Ionian Seas. These aren't officious palace directives, but witty remarks, sallies to be thrown into conversation. 

And, as a wonderful object on Ischia reveals, Homer played his part. It was found in the tomb of a young boy, perhaps fourteen years old, who died in about 725 BC. He was Greek, and unlike most of the children was cremated, an honour paid to his adulthood and maturity. In his grave his father placed many precious things: a pair of Euboean wine-mixing bowls from the famous potters of their home island, jugs, other bowls, and lots of little oil pots for ornaments. 

The greatest treasure looks insignificant at first: a broken and mended wine cup from Rhodes, about seven inches across, grey-brown with black decoration and sturdy handles. Scratched into its lower surface on one side, and not at first visible but dug away a little roughly with a burin, are three lines of Greek, the second and third of which are perfect Homeric hexameters. This is not only the oldest surviving example of written Greek poetry, contemporary with the moment Homer is first thought to have been written down, it is also the first joke about a Homeric hero.

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In the Iliad, during a passage of brutal bloodletting and crisis for the Greeks, the beautiful Hecamede, a deeply desirable Trojan slave-woman, captured by Achilles and now belonging to Nestor, mixes a medicinal drink for the wounded warriors as they come in from battle: strong red wine, barley meal and, perhaps a little surprisingly, grated goat's cheese, with an onion and honey on the side. Hecamede did the mixing in a giant golden, dove-decorated cup belonging to Nestor, which a little pretentiously he had brought from home: 'Another man could barely move that cup from the table when it was full, but old Nestor would lift it easily.' 

There are Near-Eastern stories of giant unliftable cups belonging to heroes from the far distant past. And tombs of warriors have been found on Euboea from the ninth century BC which contain, along with their arms and armour, some big bronze cheese-graters, now thought to be part of the warrior's usual field kit, perhaps for making medicines, perhaps for snacks. 

So this little situation - the Nestor story, the unliftable cup, the Euboean inheritance, and the presence at a drinking party of wonderfully desirable women - has deep roots. Remarkably, they come together in the joke and invitation scratched on the Ischian cup. 'I am the cup of Nestor,' it says, 

good for drinking 
Whoever drinks from this cup, desire for beautifully 
crowned Aphrodite will seize him instantly. 

The Pithekoussaian trader was turning the Homeric scriptures upside down. This little cup was obviously not like Nestor's cup, the very opposite in fact: all too liftable. Its wine was not to cure wounds received in batte. It was to get drunk at a party. And drinking it would not lead on to an old man's interminable reminiscing over his heroic past. No, the cup and the delicious wine it contained would lead on to the far more congenial activity of which Aphrodite was queen: sex. This elegant little wine cup, treasured far from home amid all the burgeoning riches, gold and silver brooches, success and delight of Pithekoussai, a place supplied with beautiful slave-girls taken from the Italian mainland, was for the drinking of alcoholic aphrodisiacs. The inscription was an eighth-century invitation to happiness. 

The distant past might often seem like the realm of seriousness, but the Ischian cup re-orientates that. The first written reference to Homer is so familiar with him, and so at ease with writing, that in mock Homeric hexameters it can deny all the seriousness Homer has to offer. Homer and his stories were so deeply soaked into the fabric of mid- to late eighth-century BC Greek culture that dad-style jokes could be made about him. And that makes one thing clear: here, in 725 BC, is nowhere near the beginning of this story. The original Homer is way beyond reach, signalling casually from far out to sea. 

There is only one aspect of grief associated with the sophisticated optimism and gaiety of this story, and it is inadvertent. The father offered this cup to his fourteen-year-old son in the flames of the funeral pyre, where it broke into the pieces which the archaeologists have now painstakingly gathered and restored. Death denied the boy the adult pleasures to which these toy-verses were inviting him. And that is another capsule of the Homeric condition: the Odysseyan promise of delight enclosed within the Iliadic certainty of death.
 
The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters - Adam Nicolson (William Collins; 2014)

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Oggigiorno tutti i ragazzi d'Ischia visitano, prima o poi, soprattutto in gita scolastica, il Museo di Pithecusae ma "ai miei tempi" il museo non era stato ancora aperto e nei miei ritorni ad Ischia, da quando il museo è stato aperto nel '99, non ho mai avuto il tempo, e forse nemmeno tanta voglia di visitarlo. Questa volta, avendo letto i libri di Adam Nicolson e di Robin Lane Fox, ci tenevo tantissimo ad andarci. Mi sono informato sugli orari d'apertura visitando il sito internet del museo e, appena ho potuto, un pomeriggio, mi sono recato a Lacco Ameno dove ho trovato il museo chiuso senza nessun tipo di avviso. Quindi sono andato a Ischia Porto, che si trova quasi dall'altra parte dell'isola, e, per caso, sono passato per l'ufficio turistico dove c'era una scritta avvisando della chiusura del museo nel pomeriggio. Morale: ci vuole pazienza.

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La mattina dopo, sono tornato a Lacco Ameno, il museo era apertissimo, ed è stato davvero molto emozionante vedere da vicino la Coppa di Nestore - questa semplice coppa d'argilla decorata a motivi geometrici, affatto appariscente, che che però racchiude così tanta storia ed emozione. Ecco in basso alcune foto del Museo di Pithecusae:     

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E di Villa Arbusto:

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Da continuare...